Report to the council of Regents, August 2039

[bankshot (OP)]

In the 15 years since our grand space adventure began we have made enormous strides forward.   Technical details are available in the attached database but allow me to summarize:

Earth: Implementation of the 40% rule has grown our construction facilities rapidly.   We currently have 729 and are on track to reach our final goal of 1000 facilities by 2045.   Mine output has begun to decline but with the exception of Duranium our earth-based mines have managed to keep pace with demand.   Our 3/9 naval shipyards have been mostly idle but our 5/11 commercial yards have been busy.   We now have three five-ship cargo flotillas, two six-ship system survey teams (3x grav, 3x geo), four terraformers, three fuel harvesters, two gate builders, and a tanker in service.  Terraformer and fuel harvester production have been prioritized, with 3 and 2 additional ships scheduled to commission before year end.   We have surveyed and built jump gates to all 17 systems within two jumps of Sol, which is the current limit of our effective sector administration.   The academy is being expanded, and we are studying locations for a proper spaceport.

Luna: Fighter and ordinance factories have completed their move to Luna, and refineries are now split between Luna and Earth.   The duranium, corbomite, and uridium mines continue to produce at a satisfactory level, and ground surveys have established over 1. 6M tons of duranium reserves, which has turned a potentially critical shortage on Earth into a minor nuisance.   Terraforming is 40% complete, the 90 million residents can look forward to opening the domes before 2045.   

Mars: The University of Mars has been established but infrastructure shortages have kept the colony from growing fast enough to move most of our labs off of Earth.   We anticipate faster growth after Luna terraforming frees up environmental infrastructure.

Saturn: fuel harvesting has allowed us to substantially reduce Sorium use by our refineries on Earth and Luna.   We estimate reserves of 400KT which will suffice for short to medium term needs.

Auto mines: Our 11 cometary mines continue to send their output to Luna via Mass driver, providing an excellent buffer to strategic reserves on Earth.   We continue to purchase the output of the civilian mines on Crommelin and Swift-Tuttle but the other three cometary mines and the Mimas mine were not deemed of strategic importance.

Luhman 16-A: Extensive Duranium (28M) and Corundium (59M) reserves prompted us to establish a colony however it has been determined that conditions are too harsh to ever allow full terraforming of this moon, limiting prospects for future growth.

YZ Ceti: discovery of the first extrasolar planet with a breathable atmosphere sparked a colonial rush but unfortunately no minerals were found after exhaustive survey.   While the nearby gas giant does contain over 7MT of Sorium no other minerals were found on either the planets or the moons.   Minerals will have to be imported or gleaned from the cometary halo.   

Kruger 60-A I: Extensive high quality mineral deposits (11M total reserves) coupled with a temperature slightly higher than Luna make this our next terraforming target.   The local lack of Tritanium, Uridium, and especially Duranium are troubling but the immense (40M) high quality Duranium reserve available on 60-A II should alleviate most of the problem.   Smaller high quality and substantial low quality Tritanium and Uridum deposts on other bodies in the system should be enough for ongoing use.

Minerals: only one major moderate quality (1MT/0. 4) Corbonite deposit has been found on V1581 Cygni.   Other large deposits have been of poor (0. 2/0. 1) quality.   Mercasium is no longer a concern after the 156MT/1 discovery on Proxima Centauri-A  No other minerals are of empire-wide concern.   In particular location of the 46MT, 48MT, and 428MT sorium deposits in V1581 Cygni, Luyten 726-8 and Lalande 21185 mean we should have no fuel concerns after we complete our build-out of harvesters.

Discovery of the alien wreck and colony ruins on Gilese 526-A II in April of 2038 has settled the long running debate – we are not alone.   I immediately assigned Andrew Kerr to assemble a team of our best Xenologists to study the ruins.   While those studies progressed I diverted almost all of our research labs to developing salvage and combat construction equipment in anticipation of their findings.   When the geological survey data showed massive mineral deposits and conditions roughly equivalent to Mars it was easy to prioritize colonization of the planet and supplant Kruger 60 as the next terraforming target.   Commander Kerr’s report arrived at Sol yesterday evening, and is almost as disturbing as this morning’s news of his “accidental” death.   
The aliens on Gilese 526 called themselves the Aristocracy of Koumleh.   Their technology appears to have been superior to our own, particularly in the areas of missiles and kinetic weapons.   The wrecked ship shows evidence of damage from weapons fire.   It will require much more research to uncover the full picture but based on what we know already I have ordered a halt to further exploration while we consolidate our current discoveries, wrap up our existing construction and production research projects, and turn our labs back to the study of war.   While our four Ark Royal cruisers function admirably as police ships they would not last long against true warships.   It would be reckless to continue expansion until we have real defenses in place.

I await your advice regarding research priorities, fleet design, and required force levels.

====================================================================
Receiving word of the accidental death of the xenology team leader just after the team delivered their report (but still in the same 5 day update) seemed sinister enough to warrant a write-up as a report instead of merely asking questions.   Just like Dwarf Fortress, it seems Aurora's random number generator has a propensity for story arcs.   Hopefully you found it entertaining.
 
I am 14 1/2 years into my first play-through of Aurora.   While I think I’m finally getting a feel for how to handle the economic side of things I’m still fairly clueless regarding effective warship design and tactics.   I made the decision to disperse automines and mass drivers throughout Sol’s comets to reap a steady stream of minerals for Luna which was to be my secondary manufacturing facility, allowing Earth to specialize in shipbuilding.   Implementing continuous construction factory building after a few years has doubled my starting construction capacity (some factories were exported to colonies).   But now I’m starting to see a duranium crunch so I’ll need to shift more towards automine production and eventually start thinking about cargo ship mineral runs, but I have enough reserves that any shortage should be temporary in nature.  Most of my officer corps is engaged in ground survey.   I have discovered eleven colony cost 2 planets and eight more between 2 and 3. 1 but no immediately habitable worlds after exploring 17 systems, so I assume such worlds are quite rare.   Therefore I am pausing to terraform before I reveal a potentially hostile non-player race. 

I welcome any advice you would care to give, but in particular I think I need links to information about effective warship and fleet design.

[davidb86]

Very nice writeup,  Aurora was intentionally designed to provide this kind of Role Play information. 

Normally After Action Reports and other role playing fiction are posted in the fiction boards rather than in the academy which is for new player questions and tips.

[bankshot (OP)]

Report to the Council of Regents, May 2075

It has been 50 years since our diaspora began, and our progress continues to accelerate.  Technical details are available in the attached database but allow me to summarize:

Terraforming: our 20 star systems include 30 fully terraformed worlds, 6 more in progress, and another 20 planets identified as candidates.  At current building rates we anticipate the primary terraforming fleet's generation capacity to exceed 1 atm/year in 2076.   

Fuel: Saturn's atmospheric sorium has been almost completely depleted, roughly 2KT remain. Strategic harvesting has moved to Lalande (estimated reserves of over 400MT), with secondary harvesting at Kruger 60 and 61 Cygni, and small fuel dumps have been established in all systems with a sorium-bearing gas giant.

Budget shortfalls:  over the past 10 years the increasing pace of installation construction and research has used up most of of our accumulated surplus.  We are currently researching ways to make the civilian economy more robust and have accelerated construction of high revenue (and hence tax) generating facilities on low mineral planets.  Construction supplies are either imported directly or sent via mass driver from automated cometary or asteroid mines.   

Ship construction:  Most of our cargo ships have converted to the new Magnetic Fusion drives, resulting in increased speed and dramatically improved fuel efficiency.  The fleet modernization plan has been delayed until next year - we are still awaiting final specs on improved fire control systems from Dr. Harper and on improved shields from Dr. Clements and Dr. Weston.  New missiles have already begun production so we should have a stockpile ready for newly constructed cruisers. 

PDC construction: Dr. Sanderson's brilliant design for small, highly automated point defense PDCs has paid handsome dividends.  Prefabrication on Earth or Luna allows easy construction even by a new colony's minimal on-site facilities.  With over 80% of their volume devoted to the standardized twin meson cannon, they are cheap to build and maintain.  Their small size allows for multiple units to be deployed to every colony, granting invaluable command experience to promising officers.  And even though the aesthetics of the design have been lampooned by the press (see attached article https://280th-usasa-berlin.com/BA%20009%20000%20FSB%20Home%20Page.html highlighting the long capsule containing the meson cannons flanked by its twin hemispherical support structures, with the picture taken from the most suggestive angle possible) they remain wildly popular with the people, and are seen as evidence of our commitment to provide protection to outlying colonists even with the fleet remaining concentrated at Sol.   

Sol: Earth and Luna have fully industrialized (1,000 construction facilities each), and while there have been persistent scarcities in some minerals imports from outlying systems have so far kept pace with demand.  Luna's factories are now almost fully devoted to producing automines for export to outlying systems to address this issue.   Dedicated mineral import runs have been established to Lalande, Luhman, and Kruger 60, however the freighters will return lightly loaded until more mining infrastructure is in place.  Callisto's atmosphere is now breathable and the primary terraforming fleet should be able to move to Titan later this year.  Venusian terraforming plans have been cancelled as it will be far too costly - we can terraform a dozen other worlds in the time it would take to correct Venus' atmosphere.  The high-energy physics labs at Mars university have been relocated to Mercury, and a second satellite branch is ramping up at Io.  Going forward we anticipate expansion of our research institutes to the other Jovian moons.     

61 Cygni: 61 Cygni-B I's terraforming has finally completed, and was remarkable for using only ground-based installations - at 85 Au from the primary it would have taken several years for terraforming ships to arrive.  Terraforming installations are being moved to Proxima Centauri-A III pending eventual arrival of a terraforming fleet.   

Lalande: Planet II industrialization is nearly complete, our focus is now shifting to building out mining infrastructure to support exports to Earth/Luna.

Gilese 526: Our kinetics institute is fully operational, heavy industry is slowly being moved to planet III to make space for further research expansion.  The pace of research has been so brisk that we have rarely been able to complete a full production run of missiles before the underlying technology advances enough to warrant retooling for an improved model. 

Luhman 16: While progress has been made in mitigating the risks associated with the cryogenic conditions outside the domes it has been determined that there is no real hope of warming the moon enough to be fully habitable with foreseeable technology.  Oxygen cannot be introduced to the atmosphere as it would be a solid.  But Dr. Burrows' genetic engineering experiments have raised the intriguing possibility of adapting humans to cold low gravity environments, so we have continued slowly introducing greenhouse gas, which should eventually warm the moon enough for the atmosphere to include gaseous oxygen (if barely).  Further research is indicated, in parallel with Dr. Slater's proposals for enhancing hostile-environment infrastructure. 

Deep space tracking:  In LHS 292, WISE 0350, and Barnard's star there are no bodies available for a tracking installation.  We have emplaced relay satellites but otherwise rely solely on detection buoys.  A Deep Space Tracking station has been established or is currently being constructed within the inner system of all 17 other systems.

Exploration:  exploration remains restricted - the new exploration protocol was successfully tested on two systems but it is still our belief that the risk of further expansion is not warranted as we still have ample room for expansion within currently explored systems.  For further details on the Cato Scout carrier and Clouseau and Double Dutch scout fighters please see http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10478.0 and http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10532.msg117343#msg117343 We anticipate resumption of exploration after our terraforming fleet begins work on the 7 candidate worlds in the newly discovered Alpha Centauri system.

I await your advice regarding research priorities, fleet redesign, and required force levels.   

[bankshot (OP)]

Transcript from the Emergency council meeting, November 2083

We are not alone.

On November 20th at 16:55 GMT our watchman sensor buoy detected an unregistered transit from Kruger 60 to 61-Cygni.   The ship was estimated to be 2,700 tons so the tracking station master originally thought this might be a smuggling operation but the ship was slow (1,777 km/s) and headed out-system, away from both the primary and Cygni-B.  Signature analysis did not match any known ship, leading us to the conclusion that this vessel was not built by humans.  Extrapolation of the course points toward a known gravitic survey area, so we believe this transit was by a survey ship.  The buoy was not destroyed, so the vessel most likely does not have E/M sensors and/or is unarmed. 

Let me stress to you this ship transited FROM the populated system of Kruger 60 to 61 Cygni.  These aliens were in system long enough to have either surveyed the jump point or observed civilian traffic jumping, and they were not detected.  The small size and slow speed of this ship argue for a low thermal signature.  As Kruger is also a binary system it is easily possible that survey ships could avoid detection until they explored the inner system.  And only the entry jump point was found during the survey of Kruger.  So the aliens must have come in from a point that was missed during the initial survey. 

There are two competing theories to explain this: Dr. Harper's theory of "closed jump points" posits that the baseline signature of jump points may be so low as to be undetectable until after they have been recently used.  The residual energy from the jump will then radiate for months and years until it finally dissipates.  Dr. Heisenburg theorizes that jump points don't start with a defined endpoint, but that they are entangled quantum systems.  Transiting them "observes" the wave function, collapsing it into a stable destination until enough time has passed for the quantum state to re-initialize, which will once again randomize the destination.

Regardless of the explanation, we are now left to handle the consequences.  Our ordinance factories have converted to producing the new Javelin and Aegis missiles based on 4th generation Inertial Fusion technology.  Progress has been slow on other fronts, so our fleet still uses 3rd generation Magnetic Fusion tech.  And due to budget cuts we have not expanded our ordinance infrastructure, nor did we take the time to do a full run of Magnetic Fusion missiles - production runs of the last several generations of missiles were  abbreviated due to anticipation of the new Javelin/Aegis designs.  I have ordered the fleet to draw what missiles we actually do have on hand but to get a full load-out they will have to pull from mk6 pilium missiles - 4 generations older using 2nd gen Internal fusion tech with half the hitting power, 3/4 the range, and 2/3 the speed of missiles currently in production.  We must hope the aliens are interested in peace as we are woefully unprepared for a war.   

Battle fleet will make it to Sol's 61 Cygni jump point in just under 5 days, but will take another 5 days to cross to the Kruger jump point.  I've tapped Colonels Kian and James Barton to lead our Xenodiplomatic team, they will be attempting to open communications with the aliens. 

While I hope that the Bartons will be successful we must put our economy on a war footing in case they are not.  But even if we begin to do so immediately it will be months before we see much progress.   Time is very much of the essence. 

[bankshot (OP)]

Missile Cruiser Ajax
Sol System, Earth Orbit
November 20th, 2083

Commodore Imogen Mahmood's day had been full of surprises.  First was the cancellation of this month's fleet exercises, followed directly by Admiral Oliver Johnson's reassignment to planetary defense base duty - placing him in command of battle fleet.  Then orders to unload all training rounds from the magazines and load live missiles, top off on supplies and immediately head to 61 Cygni for war games. 

As the magazine load completed a priority shuttle docked with a diplomatic team for delivery to Governor Hilton on 61 Cygni IV.  While the ships of battle fleet were the fastest long-range ships available it made no sense to send a whole fleet when a single cruiser could have gotten Colonel Barton and his team there in the same time.  And while there was always the potential for unrest on new colonies - colonists often flocked there in excess of what the infrastructure could support while terraforming was in progress, resulting in senseless deaths - but that was a matter for the army, not the navy. 

Come to think of it - how exactly were war games supposed to work with live ammo?  Not that 61 Cygni had any infrastructure to support a major naval presence in the first place.  And not to mention that Admiral Johnson was a far better teacher than Imogen ever hoped to be, and to top it all off they were leaving only a few weeks before the the new batch of Achilles class PD beam cruisers were due to launch, whose green crews would benefit from training far more than the ships already in the fleet.  None of this made sense.  But as nonsensical as they were CNO Gemma Martin's orders were clear, direct, and to be followed.

[bankshot (OP)]

Captain's Briefing Room, Missile Cruiser Ajax 4
61 Cygni outer system, near Sol Jump Point
November 25th, 2083

Five days later the jump from Sol to 61 Cygni was unsettling as ever but routine.  What followed was even more unsettling and anything but routine.  Colonel Barton had given him a message chip as soon as the jump completed, saying only "I was told you should view this as soon as we were in 61 Cygni".  Imogen placed a chip into the secure reader and activated the display.  The screen displayed the Lord Chancellor's arms with MOST SECRET, NATSEN, and NEODYNIUM codewords displayed below.  It then shifted to a video of the Lord Chancellor at his desk. 

"Commodore Imogen, I apologize for the secrecy, but we have a true emergency and the Regency council is far too busy panicking and looking for scapegoats to give rational directives.  On November 20th we detected a transit by a unknown vessel from Kruger 60 to 61 Cygni.  The ship's cross section matched no known configuration, and when challenged it replied with an indecipherable reply, so we believe this is our first encounter with an live aliens.  The xenologists and Colonel Barton's diplomatic team will be doing all they can to establish friendly communications, but should those efforts fail you will be the one who has to deal with the immediate consequences.  Oliver's no slouch and I saw how you snookered him in the last fleet exercises.  That's why I had Gemma promote him to handle the Earth-Luna PDC network so you would be in charge of Battle Fleet for this.

The alien ship moved at 1,777 km/s, was estimated to displace 2,700 tons, and moved in the direction of a known survey point when it left the range of the Watchman buoy.  The drive signature was like nothing in our database, and spectral analysis of the scanner returns showed a pronounced Neodynium emission line on the signature.  And that sums up all we know, the rest is extrapolation and speculation.  Given its size and predicted destination we believe it is a gravitic survey ship.

Our analysts have given it the code name Wallaroo.  Based on the tonnage and power output our best guess is that the ship uses Ion propulsion but it could be using higher tier engines that are tuned for fuel efficiency instead of maximum power.  That Neodynium emission line may even be from frequency doublers used for inertial confinement fusion.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium#Lasers  If that is the case they are on par or slightly ahead of us, as we have only begun to build ships with ICF drives.

I'm sure you talked to Callum before you broke orbit so you know how FUBARed our ammo logistics are at present.  I've shut down automine production on Earth and started up ordinance factory production but that will take months to make any real difference.  I wasn't able to add Luna's production - the council demanded priority production of more tracking stations for 61 Cygni and Kruger 60 even though it would make much more sense to shift those we already have. So for now the missiles you have in your magazines is the best of what we have.  I also cancelled the scrap order for the last three remaining Ajax 3 class cruisers.  They will be at your disposal as colliers once we have something to load in them. 

Your job for now is to reestablish contact with this craft then watch and wait.  I've dispatched a Cato carrier wing to join you to provide additional tracking, it should arrive in a couple of days.  Hopefully our diplo team will establish communication with these aliens and we can be friendly but that's not something we can count on. 

Our first priority is the survival of humankind, and since most of our industry and all of our shipyards are in the Sol system the security of this system is paramount.  So it cannot be permitted to discover the warp point you just transited.  Your second priority is the survival of your command.   Your two dozen cruisers represent almost our entire mobile military and cannot be replaced.  Take no risks with battle fleet.   If we have seen the Wallaroo's true speed you should be able to maintain the range and bearing of your choosing. 

Your third priority is the defense of 61 Cygni.  This ship is too small to be a threat to the system but more may come through the Kruger 60 jump point at any time.  Unfortunately Kruger 60 must survive on its own until we secure 61 Cygni.  I've ordered PDC production to resume on colonies with industry which should discourage casual raids but won't be worth much against a real fleet.  And your final priority is to keep as much of our capabilities a secret as possible.  If the aliens believe your battle group is only capable of moving at 3,000 km/s your true speed of 7,989 could prove decisive in a later fleet action.

Good luck Commodore, and Godspeed.  I'm sure we will be in contact again soon.