Post by: Starkiller on April 01, 2008, 08:51:51 PM
As I've just started checking Aurora out, and going through the four
tutorials, I have a couple of questions. First, does a ship require a Jump
Drive to go through a Warp Point? I ask because in the Tutorial on ship
creation, none of the warships he designed, had a Jump Drive.
Second, what is required to start a colony? I'm sure it's more than just
plunking people down on a decent planet. :)
Eric
Post by: vergeraiders on April 01, 2008, 10:10:38 PM
However ships with a jump drive can 'escort' a minimum of 2 other ships at a time through a JP as long as the other ships are smaller than or the same size as the jump ship (and the jump drive).
Yes you can jut plunk down colonists on a planet. However if the coloniztion cost is greater than 0 they will start to die without infrastructure. So for most planets infrastructure and colonists are needed.
Of course that won't do much other than grow colonists.
No orders are needed for archeology ot cybernetic teams, but you do need to make a colony first.
Mike
Post by: Starkiller on April 02, 2008, 12:35:41 AM
rather confusing without documentation. I hope some docs will be
written once Steve gets the program pretty much where he wants
it.
Eric
Post by: MWadwell on April 02, 2008, 03:27:44 PM
Quote from: "Starkiller"
Thanks. Aurora is fairly complex, and while I DO love complex, it IS
rather confusing without documentation. I hope some docs will be
written once Steve gets the program pretty much where he wants
it.
Eric
LOL
One of Steve's good points is that he is a tinkerer - and this means that Aurora will never be "where he wants it" (as Steve keeps wanting to add in new and cool features....)
Post by: Erik L on April 02, 2008, 08:26:40 PM
Quote from: "Starkiller"
Thanks. Aurora is fairly complex, and while I DO love complex, it IS
rather confusing without documentation. I hope some docs will be
written once Steve gets the program pretty much where he wants
it.
Eric
Closest thing we've got to documentation are the Mechanics and Academy forums.
Post by: jfelten on January 09, 2009, 05:04:55 AM
Post by: Father Tim on January 09, 2009, 06:34:05 AM
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2009, 07:19:17 AM
Am I correct in assuming that you cannot transport terraforming installations? The only options I can see are build a ship with terraforming module and send to planet in question or build terraforming installation on planet (this is only viable once you have a big enough population with sufficent contruction factories etc).
Post by: Father Tim on January 09, 2009, 07:25:54 AM
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2009, 07:41:21 AM
Quote
Father Tim wrote:
That is correct. There have been a couple debates about transporting planetary TIs, generally resulting in the opinion that the ability to do so would render terraforming ships far less useful, andthat would make the game less fun. It seems to be about a 60-40 split against moving TIs though, so make you opinion heard.
Now that I know I hadn't missed anything, I'm comfortable with not being able to transport TIs. I can see the argument about terraforming ships losing their usefulness and I agree with it.
Post by: jfelten on January 09, 2009, 08:02:05 AM
Post by: Erik L on January 09, 2009, 12:07:17 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Another probably simple question. What does it take to be able to identify the civilian ships when they appear? For a good while the game treated them like unknown aliens. I think later it learned that they were just civilian ships. The oddball thing is that those civilian ships were built right there at my homeworld. I should certainly be able to identify them. Even within the game system, I should have had excellent opportunities to scan them by the planetary, home fleet, PDC's, etc. sensors at short range when they first left the HW.
Did you have active sensors on?
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2009, 01:40:42 PM
Quote
Eric Luken Wrote:I've had the same issue and I'm sure it is because I've not turned my active sensors on. The next question is - how do I turn my active sensors on?Quotejfelten wrote:
Another probably simple question. What does it take to be able to identify the civilian ships when they appear? For a good while the game treated them like unknown aliens. I think later it learned that they were just civilian ships. The oddball thing is that those civilian ships were built right there at my homeworld. I should certainly be able to identify them. Even within the game system, I should have had excellent opportunities to scan them by the planetary, home fleet, PDC's, etc. sensors at short range when they first left the HW.
Did you have active sensors on?
Post by: Erik L on January 09, 2009, 01:46:44 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
QuoteEric Luken Wrote:I've had the same issue and I'm sure it is because I've not turned my active sensors on. The next question is - how do I turn my active sensors on? ;)Quotejfelten wrote:
Another probably simple question. What does it take to be able to identify the civilian ships when they appear? For a good while the game treated them like unknown aliens. I think later it learned that they were just civilian ships. The oddball thing is that those civilian ships were built right there at my homeworld. I should certainly be able to identify them. Even within the game system, I should have had excellent opportunities to scan them by the planetary, home fleet, PDC's, etc. sensors at short range when they first left the HW.
Did you have active sensors on?
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2009, 02:19:58 PM
Post by: Erik L on January 09, 2009, 02:28:38 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Thanks Erik and sorry for mis-spelling your name in the last post. What about the deep space tracking station? Is it an active or a passive system?
I want to say those are passives. But I am not sure. And no worries on the name
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2009, 05:12:12 PM
How do you load the magazines of PDCs with missiles? I can see how it is done with ships (load ordinance - easy!), but not with PDCs.
Post by: Father Tim on January 10, 2009, 08:57:09 AM
I am unsure if a default load of missiles is included in a pre-fab'd PDC. Either way, you'll need to transport reloads to its location to form a planetary missile stock.
Post by: welchbloke on January 10, 2009, 09:12:56 AM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
On the F5 'Class Design' window you can set a default loadout, which will then be loaded automatically when the PDC is built (assuming sufficient missiles of the correct types are available in the planetary stocks). Otherwise, the F6 'Ships' window has a bitton to 'load magazines', as well as the ability to specify a custom loadout.
I am unsure if a default load of missiles is included in a pre-fab'd PDC. Either way, you'll need to transport reloads to its location to form a planetary missile stock.
Thanks for the pointer; not quite as intuitive as loading ships.
Post by: jfelten on January 12, 2009, 07:12:41 AM
Post by: VoidStalker on January 12, 2009, 11:33:28 AM
Quote from: "Starkiller"
Hi all.I also am brand new, and my (1st) question occurs before I get as far as Eric, and it is "What is the SM (Space Master) box, and why doesn't it allow me to enter a pw? This part of the game creation is not in the tutorial in part one, and part two starts off with it so I guess now is a good time to ask. also, I get this error msg when trying to proceed past this point:
As I've just started checking Aurora out, and going through the four
tutorials, I have a couple of questions. First, does a ship require a Jump
Drive to go through a Warp Point? I ask because in the Tutorial on ship
creation, none of the warships he designed, had a Jump Drive.
Second, what is required to start a colony? I'm sure it's more than just
plunking people down on a decent planet. :)
Eric
(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/6915/newbitmapimagegw9.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
Any help is appreciated,
Void
Post by: Kurt on January 12, 2009, 11:56:11 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Is there any place that shows which bodies have been fully exploited by Geo teams?
Not that I know of, but that is a very good suggestion.
Kurt
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 12, 2009, 12:19:41 PM
Quote from: "VoidStalker"
Quote from: "Starkiller"Hi all.I also am brand new, and my (1st) question occurs before I get as far as Eric, and it is "What is the SM (Space Master) box, and why doesn't it allow me to enter a pw? This part of the game creation is not in the tutorial in part one, and part two starts off with it so I guess now is a good time to ask. also, I get this error msg when trying to proceed past this point:
As I've just started checking Aurora out, and going through the four
tutorials, I have a couple of questions. First, does a ship require a Jump
Drive to go through a Warp Point? I ask because in the Tutorial on ship
creation, none of the warships he designed, had a Jump Drive.
Second, what is required to start a colony? I'm sure it's more than just
plunking people down on a decent planet. :)
Eric
(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/6915/newbitmapimagegw9.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
Any help is appreciated,
Void
IIRC, unless you assigned an SM password when you created the game, just hit enter since the effective default password is spaces.
Post by: VoidStalker on January 12, 2009, 12:42:52 PM
Post by: welchbloke on January 12, 2009, 01:16:19 PM
Quote from: "VoidStalker"
Ah, ok then. :( ) until I fix this, lol. :(
If in doubt type 'regsvr32 msstdfmt.dll vista' into a search engine and you will find several forums that have threads that talk you through how to do it.
Hope this helps
Post by: Erik L on January 12, 2009, 01:36:16 PM
Quote from: "VoidStalker"
Ah, ok then. :( ) until I fix this, lol.
Unzip to your windows/system directory. You might need to run regsvr32 against it.
Post by: VoidStalker on January 12, 2009, 02:20:13 PM
Post by: Haegan2005 on January 13, 2009, 08:32:13 PM
Post by: jfelten on January 14, 2009, 06:29:34 AM
I built some colonies on the assumption that they are a good thing to have in any space 4X game. Now they are big enough (~50m pop each I think) and growing at a high enough rate (~10%?) that they are consuming a large and ever growing amount of my HW's production and D* stock just supplying them with infrastructure so they don't run short of housing and get annoyed. One has enough D* potential/production that if I hauled enough industry there it could probably build its own infrastructure, but its D* supply won't last forever and one of the reasons I built the colony there in the first place was a plan that it could mine D* and ship it to the HW. I can foresee this infrastructure problem growing as the colonies continue to grow.
I can see the value of colonies to man mines which are cheaper than automated mines to produce. Also, once the HW resources are mined out, the existing mines are useless there but can function on colonies that have resources to mine. Of course eventually those colonies resources will also be mined out and the process would have to be repeated at a new colony site. Assuming of course that you are lucky enough to find an inhabitable world that also has decent mineral resources. But then what do you do with the original colonies that keep demanding more and more infrastructure? Let them go in to revolt?
Traditionally colonies ship raw materials back to the homeland to feed industry there. As the colonies mature, they develop their own industry and eventually end up trading with the homeland (or rebelling of course and going their own way).
Aside of manning mines, the only real advantage I see to pop on colonies vs leaving the pop on the HW is the growth rate on colonies seems to be higher. Should I reverse my colony ships and start siphoning off pop to return to the HW to grow the tax base? I would of course be fighting against the efforts of the civilian colony ships. I can think of a bunch of small uses for colonies but I'm asking about the big picture here. I tried adding research centers to colonies so I could research more than one technology at a time, but I see little real benefit to that vs just researching one thing at a time on the HW faster.
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 14, 2009, 07:44:36 AM
Brian
Post by: jfelten on January 14, 2009, 09:16:19 AM
Post by: Erik L on January 14, 2009, 09:54:17 AM
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 14, 2009, 11:22:04 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Terraforming must be what I was missing. I built some Terraform Installation on my HW thinking I would ship them to the colonies, but then found I couldn't move them for some weird reason so that was a huge waste of resources. I'll have to look at building them on the colonies themselves. I'm not 100% sure how terraforming works. I noticed on the Economics windows under the mining tab there is a panel marked terraforming that lists all the ships there, not that any of my current ships can do any terraforming.There is a tech item under the ship components that costs 5000 rp called Terraforming Module. Each module can be installed in a ship when a ship is in orbit of a colony and has one or more terraformer modules on board they add to the terraforming rate of the colony. You need to set the gasses that you are interested in changing in the environment tab of the colony population and production screen (F2) I usually try to get the oxygen to the minimal amount needed by the race and then remove any hostile gasses (ie sulfer dioxide,etc) After that I add nitrogen if the temprature is already good for my race, or the appropriate type of greenhouse gasses to get the temprature where I want it. One note is that if the Oxygen is more than about 30%(I think) of the total atmosphere then it is actually a hostile gas itself, so you will need to add enough other gasses to get it down below the danger point.
Brian
Post by: welchbloke on January 14, 2009, 11:50:56 AM
Quote from: "Brian"
Is there a thead that disusses how the various greenhouse gases affect the temperature?Quote from: "jfelten"Terraforming must be what I was missing. I built some Terraform Installation on my HW thinking I would ship them to the colonies, but then found I couldn't move them for some weird reason so that was a huge waste of resources. I'll have to look at building them on the colonies themselves. I'm not 100% sure how terraforming works. I noticed on the Economics windows under the mining tab there is a panel marked terraforming that lists all the ships there, not that any of my current ships can do any terraforming.There is a tech item under the ship components that costs 5000 rp called Terraforming Module. Each module can be installed in a ship when a ship is in orbit of a colony and has one or more terraformer modules on board they add to the terraforming rate of the colony. You need to set the gasses that you are interested in changing in the environment tab of the colony population and production screen (F2) I usually try to get the oxygen to the minimal amount needed by the race and then remove any hostile gasses (ie sulfer dioxide,etc) After that I add nitrogen if the temprature is already good for my race, or the appropriate type of greenhouse gasses to get the temprature where I want it. One note is that if the Oxygen is more than about 30%(I think) of the total atmosphere then it is actually a hostile gas itself, so you will need to add enough other gasses to get it down below the danger point.
Brian
Post by: sloanjh on January 14, 2009, 09:51:50 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Terraforming must be what I was missing. I built some Terraform Installation on my HW thinking I would ship them to the colonies, but then found I couldn't move them for some weird reason so that was a huge waste of resources. I'll have to look at building them on the colonies themselves. I'm not 100% sure how terraforming works. I noticed on the Economics windows under the mining tab there is a panel marked terraforming that lists all the ships there, not that any of my current ships can do any terraforming.What Brian said - I think pretty much everyone uses terraforming ships, as opposed to building installations. The two problems with building installations are:
- It takes a loooooooong time for new (small) colony to build even a single installation.
Once the world is terraformed, the value of your investment goes to zero since the terraforming installations can't be shipped to other worlds.
I actually tend to build my terraforming ships without engines, plus build a couple of tugs (needs tractor-beam tech). The tugs drag the terraformers where they need to go, plus are useful to have around as fast couriers or to give a ship a speed boost. For example, I usually use a tug with my troop transport when I'm shipping ground forces around.
John
Post by: jfelten on January 15, 2009, 04:02:17 AM
Is there a convenient way to figure out what needs to be changed when terraforming begins, or do you just have to go through each parameter?
Terraforming makes larger colonies viable but it still comes back to my original question. Why colonize? We discussed a few modest advantages such as manned mines on suitable worlds and additional research projects, but past that, which doesn't really take extensive colonization, why is population off the HW of more benefit than leaving the same population on the HW? IIRC I can convert my starting HW mines to automated mines, and it only takes a few pop to run a few research installations. We did mention leader bonuses and perhaps those will become more important as my leaders evolve and improve. Does anyone have anything to add to what has already been mentioned here? Colonization in Aurora seems a much smaller benefit than in most 4X space games I've played. But I'm still only about 20 years in to my first game so I have a lot to learn yet.
Post by: Hawkeye on January 15, 2009, 10:04:02 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Terraforming makes larger colonies viable but it still comes back to my original question. Why colonize? We discussed a few modest advantages such as manned mines on suitable worlds and additional research projects, but past that, which doesn't really take extensive colonization, why is population off the HW of more benefit than leaving the same population on the HW? IIRC I can convert my starting HW mines to automated mines, and it only takes a few pop to run a few research installations. We did mention leader bonuses and perhaps those will become more important as my leaders evolve and improve. Does anyone have anything to add to what has already been mentioned here? Colonization in Aurora seems a much smaller benefit than in most 4X space games I've played. But I'm still only about 20 years in to my first game so I have a lot to learn yet.
While you are basicly correct, in that you don´t get a direct benefit from colonizing other planets (other than a larger growth rate), if you want to establish a permanent presence in another system/systems, there is realy no easy way around this.
You want to have maintanence facilities there, to keep your ships in working condition without shuttling them back all the time for overhauls
When you spread out more, it might also be a good idea to build a shipyard closer to the front lines, so first you have to have quite a few factories (requiring workers, of course) and then you need the manpower to keep the yard running.
Oh, and it doesn´t only take "a few pop" to run a Research Lab, it takes 1 mio workers each, so if you want to run 20 RLs you need some 30 mio colonists (because some 30% will work in agriculter, environment and service industrie and not be available for your industrie/RLs)
Also, don´t forget, the worse the environment, the smaller the percetage of colonist that are available for your industrie (I found a shipyard on mercury once (colonycost 10.0+) and for every 1 mio colonists there, some 10000 or so would be available for work. Needless to say that I scraped the idea of getting this yard to work)
Of course, being the Newbee I am, this is all only IMO
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:37:49 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Basic question: For officers, one of their areas is research bonus, but it has specific research types in parenthesis afterward. My question is what is the significance of that? Are those the only areas of research the officer gives benefit to, or are those areas he is extra good at, and if so, what is the additional bonus for those areas? I'm hoping the latter as otherwise it would be royal pain to keep reassigning different officers every time a different research project is started.You get the research bonus for all projects. However, if the research project is within the officer's speciality his bonus is quadrupled, so a 30% bonus becomes a 120% bonus.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:40:42 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Another probably simple question. What does it take to be able to identify the civilian ships when they appear? For a good while the game treated them like unknown aliens. I think later it learned that they were just civilian ships. The oddball thing is that those civilian ships were built right there at my homeworld. I should certainly be able to identify them. Even within the game system, I should have had excellent opportunities to scan them by the planetary, home fleet, PDC's, etc. sensors at short range when they first left the HW.Active sensors will identify the civilian ships as individual classes, after which you can view them on the Tactical Intelligence windows. Civilian ships also broadcast a transponder signal to identify them even when outside of sensor range. This will be a number (TP: 136 for example) until you identify the class, at which point it will show the class name with the transponder
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:41:39 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "welchbloke"I've had the same issue and I'm sure it is because I've not turned my active sensors on. The next question is - how do I turn my active sensors on? ;)You can also switch on active sensors on the combat tab of the F6 Ship window
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:42:44 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Planetary sensors are EM and Thermal only. This is to avoid broadcasting the existence of the population to anyone passing through the system.Quote from: "welchbloke"Thanks Erik and sorry for mis-spelling your name in the last post. What about the deep space tracking station? Is it an active or a passive system?I want to say those are passives. But I am not sure. And no worries on the name
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 10:44:42 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Next basic question:You can use one of the five buttons in the Magazine section of the Parasite/Missile tab of the F6 Ship/Window. Each button has a popup explaining its use. The one you will use most is Population, which loads the PDC magazines from the stockpiles of the parent population.
How do you load the magazines of PDCs with missiles? I can see how it is done with ships (load ordinance - easy!), but not with PDCs.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2009, 11:20:52 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
What good are colonies? By colonies here I mean those with large populations.Although there are a number of reasons to establish colonies, one possible strategy would be to stay at home and use automated mines only, shipping all of the minerals home. There are some disadvantages to a stay-at-home strategy, which are the opposites of the reasons for colonies, but it would make an interesting game. Before I list the reasons, it's worth pointing out that Aurora has realistic growth so building up colonies takes time. This is partially influenced by playing Starfire where the Rigellian Empire went from single planet of several billion to a galaxy-spanning colossus with a population of trillions in about 15 years :). I wanted the history of Empires to be more realistic in terms of what could be achieved over time. Something along the lines of the history of Weber's Terran Federation, which was measured in hundred of years.
I built some colonies on the assumption that they are a good thing to have in any space 4X game. Now they are big enough (~50m pop each I think) and growing at a high enough rate (~10%?) that they are consuming a large and ever growing amount of my HW's production and D* stock just supplying them with infrastructure so they don't run short of housing and get annoyed. One has enough D* potential/production that if I hauled enough industry there it could probably build its own infrastructure, but its D* supply won't last forever and one of the reasons I built the colony there in the first place was a plan that it could mine D* and ship it to the HW. I can foresee this infrastructure problem growing as the colonies continue to grow.
I can see the value of colonies to man mines which are cheaper than automated mines to produce. Also, once the HW resources are mined out, the existing mines are useless there but can function on colonies that have resources to mine. Of course eventually those colonies resources will also be mined out and the process would have to be repeated at a new colony site. Assuming of course that you are lucky enough to find an inhabitable world that also has decent mineral resources. But then what do you do with the original colonies that keep demanding more and more infrastructure? Let them go in to revolt?
Traditionally colonies ship raw materials back to the homeland to feed industry there. As the colonies mature, they develop their own industry and eventually end up trading with the homeland (or rebelling of course and going their own way).
Aside of manning mines, the only real advantage I see to pop on colonies vs leaving the pop on the HW is the growth rate on colonies seems to be higher. Should I reverse my colony ships and start siphoning off pop to return to the HW to grow the tax base? I would of course be fighting against the efforts of the civilian colony ships. I can think of a bunch of small uses for colonies but I'm asking about the big picture here. I tried adding research centers to colonies so I could research more than one technology at a time, but I see little real benefit to that vs just researching one thing at a time on the HW faster.
Here are 10 reasons for populated colonies, as opposed to automated mining sites and listening posts (I am sure there will be others I haven't thought of while writing this list):
1) Homeworld minerals tend to run out in the first 10-20 years of a game. If you can find a planet with good mineral deposits, you can place twice as many manned mines as you could automated mines for the same production costs.
2) Some officers have great research bonuses but they are too junior to be governor of the home world. If you establish a small research colony, the required rank is much lower. Assign the officer and then build up the colony. Having several specialised research colonies will result in faster overall research than researching everything at home regardless of specialization.
3) Ships need maintenance and overhauls, as well as a base where that can sit without accumulating time on their maintenance clocks. All of these require maintenance facilities, which in turn require population to man them. Although you can explore and project power 3-4 systems from the home world, your survey ships will soon be spending more time in transit then exploring. Establishing forward bases will allow you to expand more easily, using the base as a node. It can overhaul survey ships and can serve as a forward base for warships. If you are at war with an alien race, establishing a colony with maintenance facilities close to their territory will allow you to forward deploy ships without running up their clocks and create a defence in depth.
4) Population growth is much higher on colony worlds. In some games (such as my current campaign), lack of population can be a major problem so increasing it can become the primary economic goal, in which case a lot of small colonies is a good way to achieve it.
5) Another bonus of greater population is greater wealth production, so if you are short on wealth, creating colonies can increase the growth of the Empire's overall wealth.
6) If you build spaceports on colonies, you can create trade routes that generate more wealth. Some planets have a rare trade goods bonus that will increase the wealth from trade routes. The Commonwealth in my current campaign is generating 25% of its income from trade.
7) You can specialise colonies to take advantage of officer bonuses. As it is difficult to get an officer that is good at everything, you could move your ordnance factories to a different colony and assign a officer with a 30% production bonus. Another colony could be setup for shipbuilding and assigned an officer with a 30% shipbuilding bonus. A third for mining, etc. New colonies can also be assigned governors of lower rank so you can take advantage of junior officers that wouldn't be able to manage the homeworld.
8) Ruins can be a good source of installations. Rather than bring them all home, use them as a basis of a new colony, bring in population and only remove what it is unnecessary.
9) As known space gets larger and sources of minerals close to the homeworld are exhausted, it can be worth moving those industries that require minerals closer to new mining sites.
10) A planet with a good amount of accessible sorium can be the fuel production centre of the Empire. Rather than bringing the Sorium back to the homeworld, put mines and fuel refineries (and an officer with good production/mining bonuses) on the planet.
I note in your answer you mentioned infrastructure. Worlds with colony cost zero don't need infrastructure so It's a good idea to build terraforming ships and select planets that can be rapidly terraformed. The best place to analyse this is on the Available Colony window (ctrl-A from the main menu or the World icon on the System Map).
Steve
Post by: welchbloke on January 15, 2009, 03:03:46 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"Quote from: "welchbloke"Thanks Erik and sorry for mis-spelling your name in the last post. What about the deep space tracking station? Is it an active or a passive system?I want to say those are passives. But I am not sure. And no worries on the name :D
Post by: welchbloke on January 15, 2009, 03:05:57 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Found it, thanks Steve!Quote from: "welchbloke"Next basic question:You can use one of the five buttons in the Magazine section of the Parasite/Missile tab of the F6 Ship/Window. Each button has a popup explaining its use. The one you will use most is Population, which loads the PDC magazines from the stockpiles of the parent population.
How do you load the magazines of PDCs with missiles? I can see how it is done with ships (load ordinance - easy!), but not with PDCs.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 15, 2009, 07:40:56 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Is there a convenient way to figure out what needs to be changed when terraforming begins, or do you just have to go through each parameter?
Three things need to be done, IIRC:
1) remove dangerous gasses
2) adjust oxygen %
3) adjust temperature (using greenhouse or anti-greenhouse).
Which one to do first depends on which one is the "long pole" (since colonization costs don't add up - the colonization cost is the worst of the three). Practically speaking (assuming no dangerous gasses, and that the temperature cost is less than or equal to 2.0), this means working oxygen first, then temp. In other words, a bad gas mixture (either wrong %O2 or dangerous gasses) will set a "floor" on the colonization cost, and it doesn't do any good to further adjust the temp once the floor has been reached until it's removed.
Something to watch - %O2 is easy to adjust on low-pressure worlds, since it takes less O2 to adjust the levels.
STEVE - Wasn't there discussion a while back to use the partial-pressure of O2 as the criterion, rather than %? That would fix the above exploit. You might also want to add an additional total pressure range, e.g. the human range would be centered at 3psi O2 and 15psi total.
John
Post by: Erik L on January 15, 2009, 08:19:17 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "jfelten"Is there a convenient way to figure out what needs to be changed when terraforming begins, or do you just have to go through each parameter?
Three things need to be done, IIRC:
1) remove dangerous gasses
2) adjust oxygen %
3) adjust temperature (using greenhouse or anti-greenhouse).
Which one to do first depends on which one is the "long pole" (since colonization costs don't add up - the colonization cost is the worst of the three). Practically speaking (assuming no dangerous gasses, and that the temperature cost is less than or equal to 2.0), this means working oxygen first, then temp. In other words, a bad gas mixture (either wrong %O2 or dangerous gasses) will set a "floor" on the colonization cost, and it doesn't do any good to further adjust the temp once the floor has been reached until it's removed.
Something to watch - %O2 is easy to adjust on low-pressure worlds, since it takes less O2 to adjust the levels.
STEVE - Wasn't there discussion a while back to use the partial-pressure of O2 as the criterion, rather than %? That would fix the above exploit. You might also want to add an additional total pressure range, e.g. the human range would be centered at 3psi O2 and 15psi total.
John
Don't forget atmospheric pressure. If you got the right mix, you also need the right pressure (or within tolerances) to hit that 0.0 habitability.
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 15, 2009, 08:34:48 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Don't forget atmospheric pressure. If you got the right mix, you also need the right pressure (or within tolerances) to hit that 0.0 habitability.Currently the amount of oxygen is a minimum and maximum amount based on the pressure and percentage range of the species from the homeworld. That is it is the partial pressure of oxygen, not the % of oxygen present that is important. There is also a maximum total pressure that a race can handle. If the total pressure is greater than the racial tollerance, or the O2 amount is outside of the racial limits then the atmosphere is not breathable and the minimum colonization cost is a 2.
All this being true, a race from a low pressure world is going to have an easier time adjusting the O2 levels for planets with little or no atmosphere. They will tend to have extreme problems however on denser atmosphere worlds as thier tollerances are going to be very small (20% or .2 is only a .08 range where 20% of .05 is .001) While it may be a lot easier to get to .049 partial pressure from nothing, it is going to take a lot more to get down there from that .2 world. A sort of side note on this is that races from heavier grav worlds are going to tend to have a wider range of acceptable planets to work with, but they will tend to need more terraforming than races from lower grav planets will (gravity and density of atmosphere generally being linked to some extent)
Brian
Post by: sloanjh on January 15, 2009, 11:32:55 PM
Quote from: "Brian"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"Don't forget atmospheric pressure. If you got the right mix, you also need the right pressure (or within tolerances) to hit that 0.0 habitability.Currently the amount of oxygen is a minimum and maximum amount based on the pressure and percentage range of the species from the homeworld. That is it is the partial pressure of oxygen, not the % of oxygen present that is important. There is also a maximum total pressure that a race can handle. If the total pressure is greater than the racial tollerance, or the O2 amount is outside of the racial limits then the atmosphere is not breathable and the minimum colonization cost is a 2.
All this being true, a race from a low pressure world is going to have an easier time adjusting the O2 levels for planets with little or no atmosphere. They will tend to have extreme problems however on denser atmosphere worlds as thier tollerances are going to be very small (20% or .2 is only a .08 range where 20% of .05 is .001) While it may be a lot easier to get to .049 partial pressure from nothing, it is going to take a lot more to get down there from that .2 world. A sort of side note on this is that races from heavier grav worlds are going to tend to have a wider range of acceptable planets to work with, but they will tend to need more terraforming than races from lower grav planets will (gravity and density of atmosphere generally being linked to some extent)
Brian
Oops - Sounds like Steve already made the change (or I'm high on fumes). Sorry 'bout that.
John
Post by: jfelten on January 16, 2009, 05:17:38 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Something along the lines of the history of Weber's Terran Federation, which was measured in hundred of years.
Well, it would take a heap of game play to reach several hundred years in Aurora. IIRC Starfire admitted that the pop growth rate was totally unrealistic but they felt it necessary for game play. But in general I think the Starfire campaign system pretty much broke down for huge empires. Something we were trying to fix with 3DG before it was killed. Aurora does seem much more "realistic" whatever that is for an interstellar 4X game.
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
3) Ships need maintenance and overhauls, as well as a base where that can sit without accumulating time on their maintenance clocks. All of these require maintenance facilities, which in turn require population to man them. Although you can explore and project power 3-4 systems from the home world, your survey ships will soon be spending more time in transit then exploring. Establishing forward bases will allow you to expand more easily, using the base as a node. It can overhaul survey ships and can serve as a forward base for warships. If you are at war with an alien race, establishing a colony with maintenance facilities close to their territory will allow you to forward deploy ships without running up their clocks and create a defence in depth.
At first I really liked the maintenance system but after playing awhile, IMO it became more work than it was worth and slowed down gameplay too much for my taste. A matter of opinion of course and I know you primarily write the software for your gaming. Plus there was a bug or something I was doing wrong that became increasingly annoying where sometimes when I started an overhaul on a ship, but while being overhauled it would continue to deteriorate (I think for some reason the overhaul orders were not putting some ships at the HW where the maintenance facilities were supposed to stop ships from falling apart; I had plenty of maintenance capacity there and when I noticed this and manually moved them to the HW the deterioration stopped). And it just seemed silly for ships to be spending multiple years being overhauled, sometimes taking longer to overhaul than building a whole new ship of that class. Part of my dissatisfaction with the maintenance system was because I had used sample ship designs for my setup that I later learned were designed for a game with maintenance turned off. Later ships I designed with more inherent maintenance space worked much better, but I was still spending a lot of time fiddling with it when it wasn't adding much game enjoyment for me. So I started a new game with maintenance turned off. I am glad that is an option although it is a bit of a shame to not use that part of the game since there is a lot there. If there was a configuration option to tone down the rate at which ships fall apart, I would have gone for that instead.
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
6) If you build spaceports on colonies, you can create trade routes that generate more wealth. Some planets have a rare trade goods bonus that will increase the wealth from trade routes. The Commonwealth in my current campaign is generating 25% of its income from trade.
I need to learn about trade. Can you trade between your own colonies and HW or only with aliens? I've not noticed anywhere in the game yet that mentioned any special rare trade goods on any planets.
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
8) Ruins can be a good source of installations. Rather than bring them all home, use them as a basis of a new colony, bring in population and only remove what it is unnecessary.
I recently learned about that, although it takes many years of game time for a team to exploit those industry on ruins. Can't complain about free though.
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
10) A planet with a good amount of accessible sorium can be the fuel production centre of the Empire. Rather than bringing the Sorium back to the homeworld, put mines and fuel refineries (and an officer with good production/mining bonuses) on the planet.
That is a good point. I've not really thought of that since I can't produce fuel in the 3.2 game I'm playing due to the fuel production bug. I tried the work around but that failed so I've just been cheating on fuel so far and letting the Sorium pile up.
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I note in your answer you mentioned infrastructure. Worlds with colony cost zero don't need infrastructure so It's a good idea to build terraforming ships and select planets that can be rapidly terraformed. The best place to analyse this is on the Available Colony window (ctrl-A from the main menu or the World icon on the System Map).
I'm trying that now. I do wish there was an option to just let the terraformers figure out what is the optimal thing to work on rather than having to micromanage that particular function. Another personal preference thing.
Thanks for your answers Steve. They were all very informative.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 23, 2009, 01:53:31 PM
Quote from: "jfelten"
It sounds like there is some other problem here otherwise I would be getting a lot of bug reports about this. Are the maintenance facilities where the overhaul is taking place large enough to support the ship being overhauled? As to the time taken by overhauls, most real-world warships spend more of their time in overhaul than in Aurora. I think the last set of overhauls for the Nimitz class carriers were scheduled for 33 months each.Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"3) Ships need maintenance and overhauls, as well as a base where that can sit without accumulating time on their maintenance clocks. All of these require maintenance facilities, which in turn require population to man them. Although you can explore and project power 3-4 systems from the home world, your survey ships will soon be spending more time in transit then exploring. Establishing forward bases will allow you to expand more easily, using the base as a node. It can overhaul survey ships and can serve as a forward base for warships. If you are at war with an alien race, establishing a colony with maintenance facilities close to their territory will allow you to forward deploy ships without running up their clocks and create a defence in depth.
At first I really liked the maintenance system but after playing awhile, IMO it became more work than it was worth and slowed down gameplay too much for my taste. A matter of opinion of course and I know you primarily write the software for your gaming. Plus there was a bug or something I was doing wrong that became increasingly annoying where sometimes when I started an overhaul on a ship, but while being overhauled it would continue to deteriorate (I think for some reason the overhaul orders were not putting some ships at the HW where the maintenance facilities were supposed to stop ships from falling apart; I had plenty of maintenance capacity there and when I noticed this and manually moved them to the HW the deterioration stopped). And it just seemed silly for ships to be spending multiple years being overhauled, sometimes taking longer to overhaul than building a whole new ship of that class. Part of my dissatisfaction with the maintenance system was because I had used sample ship designs for my setup that I later learned were designed for a game with maintenance turned off. Later ships I designed with more inherent maintenance space worked much better, but I was still spending a lot of time fiddling with it when it wasn't adding much game enjoyment for me. So I started a new game with maintenance turned off. I am glad that is an option although it is a bit of a shame to not use that part of the game since there is a lot there. If there was a configuration option to tone down the rate at which ships fall apart, I would have gone for that instead.
The maintenance system encourages you to play in a way that reflects real-world concerns. Freighters have virtually no maintenance problems and you can insta-overhaul them at Commercial Freight Facilities. Non-combatants require limited overhauls and will spend only about 10% of their time in overhaul. Warships require more overhauls if they are in constant use. However, if you leave them in orbit of maintenance facilities of the required size (effectively in port), their maintenance clocks will not advance and they will not suffer any failures. Even in constant use they would only spend 25% of their time in overhaul. To be honest the maintenance requirement sort of fades into the background during the game. I know its there and I have to be aware of it but it doesn't impinge on gameplay. For example, when a survey ships comes home after a 2-3 year mission, I give it orders to refuel, resupply and overhaul, Then I forget about it until I get the event telling me the overhaul is complete. When a freighter or colony ship is on a cycle, I just include a freighter maintenance check order in the cycle. If you include a reasonable amount of maintenance on a ship, perhaps 2-4% of the hull space, it will have enough maintenance to repair its own system failures during normal operations. I don't think I have ever had a ship fall apart under regular maintenance failures.
Quote
I need to learn about trade. Can you trade between your own colonies and HW or only with aliens?
Both. You can trade between any two worlds that have spaceports as long as they are in different systems and all the jump points between them have jump gates.
Quote
I've not noticed anywhere in the game yet that mentioned any special rare trade goods on any planets.They are rare
. If a planet has any it will mention it on the SUmmary tab of the pop window.Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
10) A planet with a good amount of accessible sorium can be the fuel production centre of the Empire. Rather than bringing the Sorium back to the homeworld, put mines and fuel refineries (and an officer with good production/mining bonuses) on the planet.The fuel production bug doesn't stop fuel production entirely. It only will stop it occasionally if you have already turned off mines.QuoteThat is a good point. I've not really thought of that since I can't produce fuel in the 3.2 game I'm playing due to the fuel production bug. I tried the work around but that failed so I've just been cheating on fuel so far and letting the Sorium pile up.
As a final point, I forgot another reason for creating colonies. The service sector is much larger in percentage terms for bigger populations. Smaller colonies have a larger manufacturing sector. If you had fifteen 20m pop colonies instead of one 300m pop colony, you would have more than twice the manpower available for manufacturing.
Steve
Post by: Erik L on January 23, 2009, 03:50:34 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "jfelten"It sounds like there is some other problem here otherwise I would be getting a lot of bug reports about this. Are the maintenance facilities where the overhaul is taking place large enough to support the ship being overhauled? As to the time taken by overhauls, most real-world warships spend more of their time in overhaul than in Aurora. I think the last set of overhauls for the Nimitz class carriers were scheduled for 33 months each.Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"3) Ships need maintenance and overhauls, as well as a base where that can sit without accumulating time on their maintenance clocks. All of these require maintenance facilities, which in turn require population to man them. Although you can explore and project power 3-4 systems from the home world, your survey ships will soon be spending more time in transit then exploring. Establishing forward bases will allow you to expand more easily, using the base as a node. It can overhaul survey ships and can serve as a forward base for warships. If you are at war with an alien race, establishing a colony with maintenance facilities close to their territory will allow you to forward deploy ships without running up their clocks and create a defence in depth.
At first I really liked the maintenance system but after playing awhile, IMO it became more work than it was worth and slowed down gameplay too much for my taste. A matter of opinion of course and I know you primarily write the software for your gaming. Plus there was a bug or something I was doing wrong that became increasingly annoying where sometimes when I started an overhaul on a ship, but while being overhauled it would continue to deteriorate (I think for some reason the overhaul orders were not putting some ships at the HW where the maintenance facilities were supposed to stop ships from falling apart; I had plenty of maintenance capacity there and when I noticed this and manually moved them to the HW the deterioration stopped). And it just seemed silly for ships to be spending multiple years being overhauled, sometimes taking longer to overhaul than building a whole new ship of that class. Part of my dissatisfaction with the maintenance system was because I had used sample ship designs for my setup that I later learned were designed for a game with maintenance turned off. Later ships I designed with more inherent maintenance space worked much better, but I was still spending a lot of time fiddling with it when it wasn't adding much game enjoyment for me. So I started a new game with maintenance turned off. I am glad that is an option although it is a bit of a shame to not use that part of the game since there is a lot there. If there was a configuration option to tone down the rate at which ships fall apart, I would have gone for that instead.
Steve
I've encountered this one before... and I believe I reported it... 2.5 or 2.6 I think, around then.
Post by: Erik L on January 23, 2009, 10:55:43 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"Quote from: "jfelten"At first I really liked the maintenance system but after playing awhile, IMO it became more work than it was worth and slowed down gameplay too much for my taste. A matter of opinion of course and I know you primarily write the software for your gaming. Plus there was a bug or something I was doing wrong that became increasingly annoying where sometimes when I started an overhaul on a ship, but while being overhauled it would continue to deteriorate (I think for some reason the overhaul orders were not putting some ships at the HW where the maintenance facilities were supposed to stop ships from falling apart; I had plenty of maintenance capacity there and when I noticed this and manually moved them to the HW the deterioration stopped). And it just seemed silly for ships to be spending multiple years being overhauled, sometimes taking longer to overhaul than building a whole new ship of that class. Part of my dissatisfaction with the maintenance system was because I had used sample ship designs for my setup that I later learned were designed for a game with maintenance turned off. Later ships I designed with more inherent maintenance space worked much better, but I was still spending a lot of time fiddling with it when it wasn't adding much game enjoyment for me. So I started a new game with maintenance turned off. I am glad that is an option although it is a bit of a shame to not use that part of the game since there is a lot there. If there was a configuration option to tone down the rate at which ships fall apart, I would have gone for that instead.It sounds like there is some other problem here otherwise I would be getting a lot of bug reports about this. Are the maintenance facilities where the overhaul is taking place large enough to support the ship being overhauled? As to the time taken by overhauls, most real-world warships spend more of their time in overhaul than in Aurora. I think the last set of overhauls for the Nimitz class carriers were scheduled for 33 months each.
Steve
I've encountered this one before... and I believe I reported it... 2.5 or 2.6 I think, around then.
Referenced in this bug thread viewtopic.php?f=11&t=799 (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=799) about the 6th post in from Thor.
Post by: welchbloke on January 25, 2009, 09:03:31 AM
How do you import Themes and commander name themes? I've seen the options in the Game menu but I've never tried to use them.
Post by: jfelten on January 26, 2009, 05:23:04 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
It sounds like there is some other problem here otherwise I would be getting a lot of bug reports about this. Are the maintenance facilities where the overhaul is taking place large enough to support the ship being overhauled? As to the time taken by overhauls, most real-world warships spend more of their time in overhaul than in Aurora. I think the last set of overhauls for the Nimitz class carriers were scheduled for 33 months each.
Steve
Yes, there was sufficient maintenance facilities. The problem was
that the ship was going in to overhaul status but apparently was not
considered at the homeworld, just very very close to the homeworld, so
the clock kept advancing. And of course sometimes I wouldn't notice
this until a year or more later meaning it had to then spend much more
time being overhauled once I moved it to the HW. This happened
several times when I was trying to play with maintenance turned on. I
wonder how many people are playing with maintenance turned off so they
don't encounter this problem?
I didn't have that much trouble with warships overhauls since they
spent a lot of time at the HW. My biggest problem was with survey
ships that try to stay out awhile surveying. It seemed their
expensive survey instruments loved to break down as soon as possible.
The design I had copied had enough maintenance supplies to repair a
sensor once, but a 2nd failure it couldn't. So it also couldn't
damage control one even after it topped off its maintenance supplies.
So then it would end up spending seeming ages in a shipyard repairing
one sensor.
I'm pretty sure a modern warship spending that much time in port is
either to save money or a major refit. Until recently I worked right
next to a USN Commander but unfortunately he is at sea now. I'll have
to ask if there are any senior chiefs or such I can chat with about
how often and how long the average modern warship needs to be
overhauled.
Post by: Hawkeye on January 26, 2009, 06:07:15 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
Yes, there was sufficient maintenance facilities. The problem was
that the ship was going in to overhaul status but apparently was not
considered at the homeworld, just very very close to the homeworld, so
the clock kept advancing. And of course sometimes I wouldn't notice
this until a year or more later meaning it had to then spend much more
time being overhauled once I moved it to the HW. This happened
several times when I was trying to play with maintenance turned on. I
wonder how many people are playing with maintenance turned off so they
don't encounter this problem?
I am allways playing with maintenance ON but have never encoutered this situation.
Of course, I pretty much allways give orders in that, well, order:
Refuel at colony
Resupply at colony
Begin overhaul
I am assuming here, that the Refuel/Resupply orders make sure, the ship is really at the planet when overhaul starts.
Post by: jfelten on January 26, 2009, 07:15:17 AM
Quote from: "Hawkeye"
Quote from: "jfelten"Yes, there was sufficient maintenance facilities. The problem was
that the ship was going in to overhaul status but apparently was not
considered at the homeworld, just very very close to the homeworld, so
the clock kept advancing. And of course sometimes I wouldn't notice
this until a year or more later meaning it had to then spend much more
time being overhauled once I moved it to the HW. This happened
several times when I was trying to play with maintenance turned on. I
wonder how many people are playing with maintenance turned off so they
don't encounter this problem?
I am allways playing with maintenance ON but have never encoutered this situation.
Of course, I pretty much allways give orders in that, well, order:
Refuel at colony
Resupply at colony
Begin overhaul
I am assuming here, that the Refuel/Resupply orders make sure, the ship is really at the planet when overhaul starts.
I am pretty sure I was doing the same thing every time. Usually it would work, but once in awhile it wouldn't. Obviously the program should not allow a ship to go in to overhaul if it isn't at a legal location to do so. The worst and most exasperating part is the way I would usually finally notice it is when the ship started to fall apart. Since it had topped up on maintenance parts before going in to overhaul that meant it had already been sitting there a long time with the clock still running. Once in overhaul there is no way I could find to restock maintenance so even once I "fixed" the problem so the clock would start going backwards instead of forwards, the ship would continue falling apart. Since the clock had been running so long, the overhaul now took even longer than normal giving the ship even more time to fall apart. So here comes the ship fresh from its overhaul a decrepit wreck that then needs to go in to a shipyard for a few more years of repair.
If I had paid closer attention and monitored each ship during overhaul, I could have minimized the impact. But I was trying to move the game along as it was my first test game. Manually monitoring dozens of ships would have slowed things down considerably.
Post by: sloanjh on January 27, 2009, 01:16:46 AM
Quote from: "jfelten"
I'm pretty sure a modern warship spending that much time in port is
either to save money or a major refit. Until recently I worked right
next to a USN Commander but unfortunately he is at sea now. I'll have
to ask if there are any senior chiefs or such I can chat with about
how often and how long the average modern warship needs to be
overhauled.
For USN carriers, the peacetime cycle was 1/3 time deployed, 1/3 in refit, 1/3 working up. In other words, a 12 carrier force had 4 carriers forward-deployed. So the "clock unwind rate" was somewhere between 2:1 or 1:1 (depending on if you consider working-up time as being "in port" - I wouldn't). Then there were Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) overhauls, which are the ones that would take several years to complete - I don't remember if these were every 15, 20 or 30 years (IIRC they were supposed to be about 1/2 way through the service life of the carrier, so I suspect it's 20 or 30). There was actually a thread on this when Steve was moving to the clock-unwinding model for maintainence; I don't know if it's been lost in the depths of time, however.
I don't know how similar these numbers are for minor combatants, nor how the war has affected long-term deployment patterns.
[later] Ok - just did some googling. Here's a writeup on the various carriers in the US fleet: http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/carriers/us_super.htm (http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/carriers/us_super.htm) - apparently SLEP (which seems to have morphed to COH) is at the ~30 year mark, is intended to add 15-20 years, and takes ~3 years.
The other one is an analysis on retiring the JFK. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32731.pdf (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32731.pdf) The important bit is on page CRS-11, where it says that with a 12 carrier force, the Navy "could surge 6 carriers within 30 days and another two carriers within 60 days - this seems to uphold the idea that the other 4 carriers would be undergoing a major refit.
Disclaimer: I've never been in the Navy, so have no first-hand knowledge.
John
Post by: jfelten on January 27, 2009, 04:06:33 AM
Also, I think if you check wartime service histories you'll find that warships spent a lot more time at sea when doing so was strategically necessary, when not undergoing battle damage repairs of course.
On a more theoretical level, spaceships are not ocean ships. IMO being at sea vs in port is a much harsher environment compared to a spaceship which is always in space, unless you assume they'll be actually landing, which seems unlikely. High technology should also play a part in making machines more reliable and capable of self maintenance and repair.
Maybe there is some old salt here that will be able to share some personal experience / informed opinion.
Post by: Larac on February 20, 2009, 05:28:32 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
That is correct. There have been a couple debates about transporting planetary TIs, generally resulting in the opinion that the ability to do so would render terraforming ships far less useful, andthat would make the game less fun. It seems to be about a 60-40 split against moving TIs though, so make you opinion heard.
Well make the TI buildable on another planet but once placed can not be moved again. a One shot sorta.
That means if you find a great planet that needs TF send a module but the ships could still be used to give a boost to planets that are easier to work on.
Make the Movable one a bit less % in ability, than one build on a planet from scratch, and more costly as it has to be build , broken down, shipped, and rebuilt.
Lee
Post by: djp on February 11, 2010, 09:43:49 PM
Quote from: "Haegan2005"
you may also just drop msstdfmt.dll into the same folder as Aurora.exe. I run this off my jump drive and don't want to have to register all the dll's in windows at each computer that i use. If the needed dll's are in the working folder aurora finds them just fine.
This didn''t work for me with vista 64bit. Placed the dll in the applications directory and the error persisted, even after restarting the application. (didn't try a reboot). It worked though as soon as "regsvr32 msstdfmt.dll" was entered in a command prompt (after changing to the game directory). Might help less experienced users.
It would help even more if it could be installed with the game. During installation I also had to manually and repeatedly select "don't overwrite" for maybe a dozen other dll that I'd already got in a more up-to-date version. Maybe time for a new installer if possible ?
Post by: Erik L on February 11, 2010, 11:56:31 PM
Quote from: "djp"
Quote from: "Haegan2005"you may also just drop msstdfmt.dll into the same folder as Aurora.exe. I run this off my jump drive and don't want to have to register all the dll's in windows at each computer that i use. If the needed dll's are in the working folder aurora finds them just fine.
This didn''t work for me with vista 64bit. Placed the dll in the applications directory and the error persisted, even after restarting the application. (didn't try a reboot). It worked though as soon as "regsvr32 msstdfmt.dll" was entered in a command prompt (after changing to the game directory). Might help less experienced users.
It would help even more if it could be installed with the game. During installation I also had to manually and repeatedly select "don't overwrite" for maybe a dozen other dll that I'd already got in a more up-to-date version. Maybe time for a new installer if possible ?
It's not the installer causing those issues, it the fact that Aurora is written in VB6. VB6 uses those versions, even though I guarantee there are newer ones on Steve's computer.
Post by: djp on February 12, 2010, 09:27:51 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
It's not the installer causing those issues, it the fact that Aurora is written in VB6. VB6 uses those versions, even though I guarantee there are newer ones on Steve's computer.
Thanks, I've just read somewhere that the installer is actually a VB6 installer, not a game installer, which makes the installation process a lot more understandable, to me anyway. Keep up the good work all of you