Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: RottenBanana on January 30, 2013, 01:15:31 AM
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I've finally decided to make the jump from 5. 54 to 6. 21, but I've still only been playing for several months and this is my first time starting out as a conventional empire so I have a few questions.
1. What's the general procedure (starting techs, things to plan for) to starting off as a conventional empire?
2. Is there a thread with a good explanation on the new engines? (I'm still new so I wasn't too good at making the most efficient designs)
3. How useful are the starting missile bases? (I noticed that the range was only . 1m km and I can't imagine when they would be useful)
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*grumbles about deleting my reply*
1. You first need to develop TN technology. After that I can only suggest (shameless plug that it is) you have a look at my AAR for some idea what pitfalls lie ahead. As I think I made every mistake imaginable.
You need lots of minearls, it is a slow slog. Also develop a conventional engine, and geosurvey sensors and build your first ship to survey your inner system. You can later refit it to TN tech engines but by then your inner system will be available for exploitation.
2. The new engines are fairly easy to understand but because of a conventional start you will have not that many options available to you. This will give you lots of chances to explore the engines and learn about them. Otherwise you could ask specific questions. Just recall that you will have limited research facilities and must develop EVERYTHING so you aren't going to have many types of "applied techs" in general.
3. The intially bases are only useful to keep your officers busy and out of trouble. They can be refit to more advanced models (remeber to delete not destroy the base) when your technology improves. It took me 3 tries to get something I liked for a base.
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Thanks for the tips. I was playing while checking out your AAR, but unfortunately, I ran into the bug where the PDC crew dies due to lack of life support and I get spammed with the 3021 (not exactly sure) error. I might just do a conventional start on v5. 54 for learning purposes. What should I convert the conventional industries to when I am at the early TN stage?
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To overcome that pdc life support bug, just remove the starting missile bases in SM mode, double check their designs, then SM them back in.
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My engine strategy is:
-Design maximum sized engine with a 25% or so power increase
-Slow ships have one big engine stuck on the back, fast ships are an engine with some ship on the front
As for a conventional start, first step is look at your homeworld and figure out what mineral you will use up first. Go and mine a planet that has this mineral, plus duranium, as soon as possible.
The starting missile bases are mainly so that multiple nations starting on earth all have the ability to nuke each other. Also, to keep the population happy until you can build some actual defenses.
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I converted the conventional industry (500): 100 construction facilities, 100 mines, 100 construction facilities, 100 mines, and remaining 100 between fuel refineries, missile factories and fighter factories (65, 25, 10 I think).
The AAR will be continuing I'm just a bit overwhelmed and lacking time right now.
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Unless you really have a strong understanding of Aurora's mechanics, I usually discourage newer players from conventional starts. That being said...
The best thread for details on the new engines is the v6.00 change log. You have to drill through a lot of other posts, but the details are there.
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As of right now, I'm working on getting a geo survey vessel up and running while I research the base TN tech. Also, I'm setting my only shipyard to continually expand until it's needed for production because I'm foreseeing problems with ship production later in the game. Is there anything else I should be doing?
@Charlie: I have a decent understanding of the mechanics, but, for myself, I think it would be beneficial to learn the game from the conventional start so I can better anticipate problems that might occur from some oversight early on.
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Mind your mineral supply. It'd suck to run out of, say, Duranium, before you have the ability to colonize somewhere with an ample supply.
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With your geosurvey ship running I would make sure to check out any comets you have in perhellion just so you know what is on them.
I would watch the expansion of the shipyard. It gets expensive to retool and you will sooner or later hit a mineral crunch (depending on the relative mineral wealth of the system).
The sooner you can get CMCs to help you out the better but I'm not 100% sure what triggers them...you may need to have civillian shipping lines first. Money is the last of your worries in a conventially start...Steve really should turn it down as you can't spend it and it accumulates during the 50 years of low level activity to a pretty serious chunk of change.
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My mineral supply is starting to be of some concern, but Luna and Mars actually have enough resources to keep me alive for now. I'm fairly certain that the CMCs appear whenever there is an opportunity for them. For example, whenever I set up a colony and start moving infrastructure, colony ships appears shortly after, and whenever I create contracts, cargo ships appear. What techs should I focus on? I've been doing construction rate, missile tech, and engines.
EDIT: I just added more contracts for shipping and heavily subsidized the two shipping lines and I observed 3 freighters appear to claim the jobs.
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Before I start I will double or triple my Earth mineral amounts. That should give you a realistic amount of minerals to burn through before you get out of the solar system.
I have found this time around that the civilian shipping companies are hugely helpful, allowing me to save on fuel by not making the trips myself many times. You can't ask them to haul minerals, so when you leave the system you'll have to send your ships out to bring minerals back; nor does it appear that they will build jump-capable freighters, so you have to build jump gates.
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There are nearly 20 civilian ships helping me out which is quite nice because I only have 2 freighters and 1 colony ship. I still haven't gotten out of system yet.
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on the question of tech focus. Realistically I don't see how you can focus on anything. You have nothing so everything needs a bit of effort. What you prioritize I would say depends a lot on your scientists and needs are. About the only thing you have to focus on is weapon systems since you can't chase too many of them.
Civillian lines are wonderful. Basically you only need a few small ships to start you colonies and they take over...unfortunately they tend to do dumps. But once you have civillian in system transport available pretty much everything but mineral pick up is better left to them.
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So far I've been able to get a decent economy running with tons of mining complexes (both mine and civ) and I've made friendly contact with an NPR in the next system over. I'm just having issues with several ships breaking down way too often.
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How many engineering spaces do you have on your ships? Also you should look at the maximum cost for a repair and the amount of spares and make sure your ships have at least that many. Sounds like your game has been blessed by more good luck than I have been having.
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I tried terraforming the planet and I think I'm killing them. Oops! I usually put around 40, but they break down more than once a year. I tried improving damage control and stacking about 100 on a missile frigate and I now have a fail rate of over 100.
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Damage control is for repairing components that are damaged/destroyed during combat. Engineering Spaces are for the day to day maintenance of the ship and to prevent and repair regular failures.
Notice the ship header information for a ship from Steve's current fiction story:
Warrior class Heavy Cruiser 12,800 tons 378 Crew 2399 BP TCS 256 TH 1280 EM 0
5000 km/s Armour 8-48 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/8/0/0 Damage Control Rating 11 PPV 60
Maint Life 4.53 Years MSP 1289 AFR 119% IFR 1.7% 1YR 102 5YR 1531 Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months Spare Berths 0
The yellow row shows that the ship should be able to operate for about 4.5 years based on the amount of maintenance supplies it is carrying. It has 1289 Maintenance Supplies, the most expensive component takes 160 Maintenance Supplies to repair. If you have fewer maintenance supplies than the Max Repair value then you will be unable to repair that item. If that item is a Jump Drive, or other mission critical system the ship is effectively non-functional.
The other numbers on that row are:
AFR - Annual Failure Rate, Likelihood of a failure in a year
IFR - Incremental Failure Rate, This is how much the failure rate increases as the ship goes more time without an overhaul and away from maintenance facilities. The failures happen more frequently the longer a ship is out of an overhaul.
1YR - Number of maintenance supplies to maintain the ship for 1 year
5YR - Number of maintenance supplies to maintain the ship for 5 years
clement
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Damage control is for repairing components that are damaged/destroyed during combat. Engineering Spaces are for the day to day maintenance of the ship and to prevent and repair regular failures.
The other numbers on that row are:
AFR - Annual Failure Rate, Likelihood of a failure in a year
IFR - Incremental Failure Rate, This is how much the failure rate increases as the ship goes more time without an overhaul and away from maintenance facilities. The failures happen more frequently the longer a ship is out of an overhaul.
1YR - Number of maintenance supplies to maintain the ship for 1 year
5YR - Number of maintenance supplies to maintain the ship for 5 years
clement
Clement has most of the stuff correct. Damage control is a measure of how fast a ship is going to repair damage in a combat scale. Each time that it successfully repairs a system it does use mainenance supplies equal to twice the amount it would normally take. If you don't have the mainenance supplies on board then you can't fix anything with the damage control.
The second is the IFR (incremental failure rate). This is the chance that in any 5 day construction cycle a component will fail on the ship. This is the base failure rate, and every year that a ship is not overhauled the rate doubles (can't remember if is arithmetic or geometric). This is why there is such a huge difference between the supplies needed to keep a ship going on the first year of service vs the amount for 5 years of service. Also note that these are average amounts so it is possible for a ship to use more or less in a single year based on the specific components that fail.
Brian
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Also note that if you have a carrier with a large enough hangar to fit your damaged ship into, it can be repaired using the carriers damage control rating and maintainance supplies. This lets you build smaller ships/fast attack craft without worrying about their capability to repair battle damage.
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I meant to say 100 engineering spaces, but my problem still persists.
@clement and Brian: Ah thanks, that clears things up a bit. I didn't realize that the more a ship was in service without an overhaul, the more maintenance it would require. I've been trying meet the protection requested by my new colony by using missile ships, but it seems that PDCs are more viable in terms of upkeep. Fortunately, there haven't been any signs of hostile NPRs and I'm pretty sure I only created 1 at the start, which ended up being my shipless ally.
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That's not the NPR from game creation. There are three kinds of aliens you can encounter in-game:
1. Spoilers. 'nuff said.
2. NPR(s), who "mirror" yourself. Except they had an TN-start even if you had an conventional start. The NPR will be exploring and growing so when you encounter it, it should already have an star empire going on.
3. "Minor" aliens, that are activated only when someone visits their homesystem. During game creation, you set the percentage - 30% being default - of live happening on a suitable planet. This means that the first time a player or an NPR or spoiler comes across a Terrestial world, there's a 30% of chance of an alien race getting created. These aliens are always one planet-bound to begin with but they can expand beyond their homeworld and -system. Some might be technologically backwards, so they are no threat - others might be fairly advanced.
If you kept the "create random aliens as NPR" toggle on, then once these "minor" aliens have been activated, they behave exactly like NPRs and you cannot mess with them through SM. So it's entirely possible that while you turtle for 50 years in Sol, the NPR activates a dozen "minor" aliens plus maybe some spoilers and many of these then proceed to explore and thus activate more.
At least, such is my understand of how the system works.
I always do conventional starts. If your economy is running smoothly - the first hurdle - then it's time to build a military. You don't want to get caught with your pants down. Create an ideal task force, decide what sort of ships it needs, then jot down what components such ships needs and then go researching. I have an Excel-spreadsheet for that, where I turn components bold as they are researched. This way when I actually design the ships, I won't be missing a powerplant or that my Beam Fire Control is too small for my beam weapons et cetera. It's also good idea to jot down a basic, common speed for your task force, ie "all ships must go at least 3000 km/sec or faster".
Finally, as others have stated, you cannot overhaul your ships too often. Build at least three task groups - one will be in overhaul, second will be doing taskforce training and third can actually go on missions.
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Hmm, that's more of an incentive to begin producing more defenses. My current missile design strategy is to determine what range I want to be firing at (in this case it's around 100m km), design an active sensor and fire control with that range, and design a missile that can actually hit something at that range. My biggest issue with military is that I've only had one hostile encounter on a different save and I have no idea what a basic fleet would look like. I figured I'd start with missile frigates accompanied by colliers and some beam PD ships.
Also, will the minor race eventually begin to explore and produce ships or will it remain as a conventional race forever?
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Also, will the minor race eventually begin to explore and produce ships or will it remain as a conventional race forever?
Eventually it will. It's also possible that a Duranium crash prevents this.
In the Fiction forum, in one of the AAR/LPs, the human player conquered an alien race and their planet had zero duranium left.
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I've been told conventional NPRs stay such, but don't quote me on that. As for fleet make-up I'd suggest reading some AARs. They helped me a lot in understanding the military aspect. Just don't use mine, for role-playing purposes I've intentionally designed ships that will probably be decimated on their first combat mission. The most efficient route is to specialize every ship, so you'll an ASM design, an AMM design, a PD design and so on. I don't like to do that just because it feels wrong to me, but that's just personal preference.
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They should get moving, eventually but who has the patience for that? Plus, it's good practice for your GU's! ;D
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Eventually it will. It's also possible that a Duranium crash prevents this.
The planet has the starting homeworld resources, but it doesn't seem like they're mining it.
I've been told conventional NPRs stay such, but don't quote me on that. As for fleet make-up I'd suggest reading some AARs. They helped me a lot in understanding the military aspect. Just don't use mine, for role-playing purposes I've intentionally designed ships that will probably be decimated on their first combat mission. The most efficient route is to specialize every ship, so you'll an ASM design, an AMM design, a PD design and so on. I don't like to do that just because it feels wrong to me, but that's just personal preference.
I've been reading a couple and they've been quite helpful. Should I stick primarily to beam and missile tech since I've already started down that path?
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I've been reading a couple and they've been quite helpful. Should I stick primarily to beam and missile tech since I've already started down that path?
If you concentrate your research efforts, they pay off quicker. Once you have multiple worlds with multiple research facilities, you can branch out into areas you neglected at the beginning. Just remember a low-tech weapon will look like crap compared to another high-tech weapon.
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If you concentrate your research efforts, they pay off quicker. Once you have multiple worlds with multiple research facilities, you can branch out into areas you neglected at the beginning. Just remember a low-tech weapon will look like crap compared to another high-tech weapon.
Sounds like I'm going to be conquering this race. Would firing missiles at their homeworld harm the colony I've started on it?
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Possibly. Collateral damage is always a risk. More than that, there will be radiation and atmospheric dust that hinder all colonies on the planet.
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Possibly. Collateral damage is always a risk. More than that, there will be radiation and atmospheric dust that hinder all colonies on the planet.
Not worth the risk. GU training seems much more beneficial, anyway.
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I've been told conventional NPRs stay such, but don't quote me on that.
There are no conventional NPR's, only trans-Newtonian. As I recall, Steve didn't want too hassle with building the necessary code for the AI to advance to TN techs.
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There are no conventional NPR's, only trans-Newtonian. As I recall, Steve didn't want too hassle with building the necessary code for the AI to advance to TN techs.
There are some pre-industrial NPRs though, just not any with conventional industry
Steve
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Are pre-industrial NPRs the ones without any space presence? I've run into a number of aliens that have no ships or shipyards. Can those aliens learn new technologies?
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Are pre-industrial NPRs the ones without any space presence? I've run into a number of aliens that have no ships or shipyards. Can those aliens learn new technologies?
They are the ones without a space presence and they can't advance. You can protect those poor, defenceless aliens from less honourable Empires than your own, or invade and turn them into slave labour or perhaps nuke the planet just to watch it it glow in the dark :)
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They are the ones without a space presence and they can't advance. You can protect those poor, defenceless aliens from less honourable Empires than your own, or invade and turn them into slave labour or perhaps nuke the planet just to watch it it glow in the dark :)
Crop circles and abductions. 8)
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Or a spore style obelisk where by building a generic structure it imparts trans-newtonian knowledge on the populace. Then they become your allies and build a huge space navy of ONE FREAKING SHIP. Sorry, I'm still upset about that.
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i have a preference for the slave labour outcome, gives u additional pop, something to do with youre troops and if youre lucky they can colonize some planets that youre native population might not be able to
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Or a spore style obelisk where by building a generic structure it imparts trans-newtonian knowledge on the populace. Then they become your allies and build a huge space navy of ONE FREAKING SHIP. Sorry, I'm still upset about that.
well making them part of youre empire allows u to build ships in youre image using their labour and build space infustructgure on their planet ( just a shame u cant grant a planet its own indepednance allowing it to form its own empire) or allow it to rebel
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I wasn't talking about Aurora lol. Spore was a game hailed as revolutionary. It was to allow you to control the evolution of an organism from the single cell stage all the way up to sentient life. And then you could form a world government through peace or war and venture into space where you'd encounter aliens, form alliances, wage war and uncover an evil presence threatening all life. But it turned out to be extremely disappointing. It was nothing like the previews said it would be. My comment was an insult to the game's space stage, where you could "uplift" primitive species and have them be allies. But that turned out to be placing a big, black obelisk on their planet and then waiting for a bit. And the alliance just meant you could summon a single small ship to help you fight once in awhile.
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i have a preference for the slave labour outcome, gives u additional pop, something to do with youre troops and if youre lucky they can colonize some planets that youre native population might not be able to
How do I enslave the population?