I completed the tutorial, then started over with a conventional game. (It just seemed more appealing, for my first game - though it took me far too many years before I finally realized what technologies I needed to research in order to build a spaceship engine!)
I'm not a wargamer, but I find SimCity-style games too boring. I like conflict - or the potential for conflict - in a game, though I actually enjoy the building aspects of strategy games far more than the warfare part. So I'm glad to see that Aurora contains both. And given these preferences, I want to play as a peaceful civilization, expansive, but actively hoping for peaceful relations with aliens. Given this background, here are my questions:
1) I've just started a geological survey of the planets and moons of Alpha Centauri using a low-tech (everything of mine is low-tech right now) civilian geosurvey ship. Frankly, it doesn't, as yet, even have a way to get back to the Sol system. But as a civilian ship, it doesn't have any other sensors. I assume that it would still see any alien presence when orbiting a planet, wouldn't it? After all, these ships do start with a level 1 in thermal and EM sensors.
2) It probably wouldn't see ships unless it was in the exact same location (using that passive sensor slide-bar, I can't tell if it can sense anything at all), but if it encounters anything hostile, well, it's both slow and completely unarmed. So it would die, no matter what. Eventually, I'll probably put passive sensors on my scouts. But if I understand correctly, active sensors would cause damage to my relations with other species, right? So, given that my goal is peaceful coexistence, is there any reason I'd want active sensors on my first-in scouts anyway?
Or am I missing something? I understand that my scouts will be dead ducks the first time they encounter something hostile. But this is the trade-off for not unnecessarily scaring new species, isn't it? Once I've explored the planets of a new system and found it empty, I'd feel free to send in military ships with active sensors (once I actually develop some
).
My other questions are just loosely related (only to the extent that I'm not focusing on military technologies, and I know I'm going to get my butt kicked the first time I encounter something hostile):
3) Unlike the tutorial start, the conventional start begins with a whole bunch of Missile Complex Planetary Defense Centers. Other than having a large PVP value to keep my population happy, what good are they? Can they actually attack ships in the Sol system? If I understand correctly, they seem to show a zero chance of hitting something at
any range. And since they weren't in the tutorial, I assume that I should do something with them,... but what? There's a "Refit PDC" option for them under the Industry tab, but no information as to what it would actually do.
4) Maybe I need to design a different PDC first? That's another thing I don't understand. What are they good for? Why would you build a PDC instead of a ship? I know you can tow them (with the appropriate technology). And I think the tutorial said that ships coming through a jump point would be disoriented briefly. So can you tow a PDC to a jump point and leave it there as a defensive strong-point? (I imagine in that case I might want to design the PDC with meson cannon and lots of armor?)
I've searched for info about PDCs here, but I haven't found anything that really helps. I'll learn most of this through experience, I'm sure, but I guess I don't understand even the basic idea of PDCs. And I really don't understand about those missile complexes (except for the realism of having them in the first place). Any help?
Thanks...