Good afternoon, I understand correctly that the forces of attraction of celestial bodies are not implemented in the game.  Those.  ships cannot travel between planets by first setting course and leaving the rest to the gravity of the star and planets.

Is it a good idea to put your ground forces support equipment (long range arty, fire controllers, logistics, and constructions units) inside the same unit as your HQ or should they be broken up into smaller dedicated units to take advantage of Ground Commander skills?

My current force layout puts some artillery and some supply in each HQ formation, then at the division level (Battalion, brigade, division), I have 1 engineer battalion and 2 supply battalions as direct subordinates of the division HQ. That way even smaller formations have most of what they need to work, and I consider it a good middle ground when it comes to micro-management

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on Yesterday at 03:26:07 PM

In the Game Settings, there is a checkbox (ticked by default) called "Generate New Races as NPRs".

My understanding is that if I uncheck this box, new races will be generated (according to the NPR generation chance setting) as player races. However, I am concerned that I may be misunderstanding and the functionality is actually to disable automatic new race creation entirely. Does anyone happen to know for certain what the mechanic is here?

Yes, untick the box and any new race is player-controlled one. If you don't want any new races generated automatically, set the percentage change of spawning to zero.

Eeeeexcellent. That's what I thought but I was feeling a bit unsure, thanks!

1 - Do NPRs have to perform fleet training to avoid penalties? Doesn't look like it...

No but NPRs play by slightly different rules when it comes to that.

2 - Do NPRs fully use FACs and fighters and carriers now? Have seen FACs, but not sure on the fighters and carriers.

Yes, at least to FACs - not sure if carriers/fighters were added already. Steve has been meaning to add them and the 7.2 update to VB6 Aurora was meant to include them - they even show up in Steve's AAR for that update - but then the conversion to C# happened.

3 - Do NPRs have civilian shipping lines? Can't quite see why they wouldn't but would be nice to know.

Yes, sort of.

4 - Do NPRs use fighters, and by extension, ships and FACs for ground support already or is that not implemented yet?

NPRs do not use ground-support fighters. They also can use ships to bombard colonies and troops but I don't know whether they do actual ground-support missions.

In the Game Settings, there is a checkbox (ticked by default) called "Generate New Races as NPRs".

My understanding is that if I uncheck this box, new races will be generated (according to the NPR generation chance setting) as player races. However, I am concerned that I may be misunderstanding and the functionality is actually to disable automatic new race creation entirely. Does anyone happen to know for certain what the mechanic is here?

Yes, untick the box and any new race is player-controlled one. If you don't want any new races generated automatically, set the percentage change of spawning to zero.

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on Yesterday at 03:15:07 AM

Speed is in many way important, but an over emphasize on it can also leave your overall fleet impotent over someone that have not overengineered in it.

Just don't say that on the Reddit Aurora forum... 

I'm well aware of the love for speed in many peoples hearts, I also to some extent understand why... but it is very easy to squander resources on luxury things when you have lot's more than the opponent or the opponent does not surprise you with alternative strategies.

My issue is that.. especially if you play against the AI... then speed is actually even less of an issue. But I don't think people even try other strategies. Sensors and information are even more powerful against the AI as it is quite easy to fool by attacking it with no idea where you even are. Attacking AI with ECM induced missiles also seem OP, as they don't put ECCM in their AMMs, at least I managed to defeat a much more advance AI that way not long ago. I just had basically container carriers with (very cheap and slow) filled with strike crafts and scouts. The AI had no counter to that what so ever... that is why I prefer to play multiple faction but I do retain AI threats as well.

But I think that, as I mostly play multiple factions, it is generally paramount that you get most of the resources you have to find a doctrine that works best for you (or rather the individual faction). This will include everything from terrain, resources, scientists, alliances, threats etc... How much are you investing on defensive or offensive capacity, obviously depend on your resources quite often and this influence the type of ships you can build and how they are designed. Just the fact that you will never ever have a perfectly homogeneous fleet in such environments make it obvious that things are not as easy as one tactic defeat all others.

Then obviously we have role play which in turn make things way more complicated as it now involves politics and that people have difference of opinions as to what is the best thing to do and prioritise. This also will influence ship doctrines and developments and not always for good, which lead ship to become... well... not optimised. At least I try to play my games as if the factions experience everything for the first time, so I can't draw on previous game experience. We can't very well press pause and reset from a previous save in real life either...

It is better to have a bunch of crappy ships today than a score of superior ones tomorrow if the war is today. The thing is... you don't know when that next conflict will start either.

But anyway... I'm just mumbling now so I better stop...