Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu

[stamasd]

What? No Unobtainium? This game is a joke and can't be taken seriously!!

There's Uridium though.

[blue emu]

I simply followed what you did. The problem is I don't know where to select the ones I want to have instead just researching them. I tried the research screen (obviously) but all I found there was conventional research that would take a lot of time and use scientists and labs.

Remember in Post #3 I said:

With these settings chosen, we can create the game and then enter Space-Master mode (to allocate our starting tech points and construction points) and press <F3> to bring up the System Map.

Bring up the start-up menu... this thing:



... and on the "SpaceMaster" menu, pick the top entry "SpaceMaster Mode On". If you didn't set a password when creating the game, then just press <Enter> when asked for a password. You are now in SpaceMaster mode, and the next time you bring up the Research screen, it will have an option labelled "Instant", which will instantly give you the tech, and will subtract the appropriate number of points from your starting Research Point allocation.

You build your starting fleet the same way, by entering SpaceMaster mode and then choosing "Fast OB Creation"... also known as <F9>... off that same Spacemaster menu.

[telesien]

Thanks

[blue emu]

Now that we've spent half of our starting tech points on our two crippled tech fields, we can spend the remaining points on the other SIX tech fields.

For Power and Propulsion:

Capacitor Recharge Rate 2, 2000 points
Fighter Engine, 12,000 points (that's TWELVE THOUSAND FREAKIN' POINTS )
Fuel Efficiency +10%, 1000 points
Fuel Efficiency another +10%, 2000 points
Jump Point Theory, 5000 points
Squadron Jump Size 3, 2000 points
Max Jump Radius 50k, 1000 points
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology, 3000 points

For Energy Weapons:

12 cm Lasers, 2000 points
15 cm Lasers, 4000 points
Visible Light Laser, 2000 points
Near Ultraviolet Laser, 4000 points
Tracking Speed 2000 km/sec, 1000 points
Tracking Speed 3000 km/sec, 2000 points
Tracking Speed 4000 km/sec, 4000 points

For Sensor Technology:

Active Grav Sensor Strength 12, 2000 points
Beam Fire Control 16k range, 2000 points
Beam Fire Control 24k range, 4000 points
EM Sensor Sensitivity 6, 2000 points
Thermal Sensor Sensitivity 6, 2000 points
Gravity Survey Sensor, 2000 points

For Logistics:

Small Crew Quarters, 1000 points
Small Engineering Section, 2000 points
Tiny Engineering Section, 4000 points
Fighter Engineering Section, 6000 points
Small Fuel Storage, 1000 points
Tiny Fuel Storage, 3000 points
... all those miniaturization techs were to enable us to build Fighters.

For Defensive Systems:

Thermal Signature Reduction to 75%, 1500 points
Thermal Signature Reduction to 50%, 3000 points
Shield Regeneration Rate 1.5, 2000 points
Shield Regeneration Rate 2, 4000 points
High Density Duranium Armor, 2500 points
Internal Armor Rating 1, 5000 points
Beta Shields, 2000 points
Gamma Shields, 4000 points

For Biology Techs... none.

And I went back and added:

Jump Gate Construction Module 180 days, 5000 points

... to the list of Construction techs.

That leaves us with about 33,500 points left... which I will temporarily hang onto while I'm designing our ships; since we will need some of it for Component design (for example, even after discovering the Jump Drive Technology, you will still need to separately research each type of Jump Drive component that you intend to put into your ships) and I'll also need a bit of a buffer to cover anything that I suddenly realize was forgotten during my Tech Research picks.

[blue emu]

All right... the next step in setting this monster up:

Having picked most of our starting techs (and having saved a few thousand tech points to research ship components and correct any mistakes), we can now start designing our spaceships. We open the Class Design window. Since I un-ticked that "Auto Design" option during World-Gen, there are no existing designs... we need to start from scratch.

One of the first ships that we'll need... to help solve our resource crisis... is an exploration ship for prospecting the Planets and Asteroids.

On the Class Design window, hit "New" for a new design. It gives us a few default components, and randomly picks a class name (Tribal) and class type (Cruiser). We'll be changing both of those... but first let's change to the "Design View" page and see if we forgot anything REALLY important while picking our techs.

It turns out that we did. There are no Engines listed in the Available Components window. That, by itself, is not surprising, since we haven't designed our components yet... that's what we saved that last 30-odd thousand research points for, after all... but when we click the "Design Tech" button (at the bottom of this screen) to design an Engine component, it turns out that we only have the lowest level of Engine tech researched, Nuclear Thermal Engines. Oooops. They are really bulky and slow... so we're going to go back to the Research window and use some of that 33,500 tech points we saved to buy the NEXT level of Engine tech, Nuclear Pulse Engines...

... and it turns out that Nuclear Pulse Engines was a prerequisite tech which opens up a new option: Jump Drive Efficiency 3. We'll buy that, too, since it's quite cheap (2000 points) and will make our Jump Drive components more compact. We'll think about buying the NEXT level of Jump Drive Efficiency as well, since it only costs 4000 points... but we'd better wait a bit on that decision, until we see how much of our saved tech points our current components will require.

Having bought the Nuclear Pulse Engines tech, we now have better options in the "Design Tech => Create Research Project" window. We'll design a ship component for Nuclear Pulse Engines.



Already we have some tough choices to make. Armored or non-Armored? Thermal Reduction or not? Or should we design several different engines, with different characteristics, at the cost of spending more research points? We'll need at least three designs, since Military ships require Military-grade engines, Fighters can only mount Fighter engines, while Civilian ships require Civilian engines. I decide to go with the minimum of three designs, one for Fighters, one for Military ships and one for Civilian ships; not Armored (since that would increase the amount of hull displacement that the engines occupy, something that we probably can't afford this early in the game), and the Military design will have Thermal Reduction (making our warships harder to detect) while the Civilian design will not.

Now we have some engines selectable in the Design View. Cool.

More to come in a few minutes.

[Woody Man]

How early does the tech go? Is it possible to start with modern day tech, or is that just skipped out?

[Stuckenschmidt]

Say, how much time did you spend reading the manual?

[blue emu]

How early does the tech go? Is it possible to start with modern day tech, or is that just skipped out?

You can start in the modern day, and research all of the Trans-Neutonian techs by hand, yes... there is an option for that in the World-Gen menu. Bear in mind that the Aliens already start ahead of you in the tech-race and ship-building race, though. If they happen to find Earth early, you'll be screwed.

Say, how much time did you spend reading the manual?

There is no manual... the game is still in Alpha. I spent a day skimming through the Wiki, and a couple of days fooling around with the game. I'm still a noob.

[blue emu]

OK, let's continue designing our first space-ship.

When we clicked the "New Class" button, the game automatically gave us a few defaults... it picked "Tribal" as the name of the new class, and "Cruiser" as the type of hull. This isn't a Cruiser... it's a Geological Survey vessel. So we'll change the hull type to "Geo-Survey", and the class name to "Geologist" (we're going to be naming the ships themselves after well known geologists such as Agassiz and Hutton).

Now we start adding some components.

This ship will be going off exploring, so it might be away from Earth for substantial periods of time... so we'll give it a second Fuel Tank to extend its flight endurance, and we'll add an Engineering section to reduce the breakdown chances and to carry some spare parts for emergency repairs. We'll also give it TWO Geological Sensors instead of one... the second one will double its speed at surveying planets, and will also give it a back-up in case one sensor malfunctions a billion kilometers from home.

We'll also give it four of those newly-designed Military-grade Nuclear Pulse Engines, which should give a small ship like that an excellent turn of speed; and we will design (and buy) a new component: a low-spec Passive Thermal Sensor. This weak Infra-Red detection set isn't really Military-grade hardware, and it would be out of place on an armed ship like a Destroyer... but our Geo-Survey vessel isn't going to be carrying any weapons, armor or shields anyway, so it doesn't need top-of-the-line sensors; just something that will tell it if it happens to stumble across a planet already occupied by Little Green Men.

The fully-designed ship looks like this:



It masses only 2000 tons, so it can be built in any of our Military shipyards... a Civilian shipyard can only build Civilian vessels such as Freighters or Colonizers... and travels at a fast 4000 km per second. It has a flight endurance of nearly a year at full power, and a mean-time-to-breakdown of over five years (and it carries some spare parts anyway). No weapons, no armor, no shields and only rudimentary sensors except for that double-strength Geological sensor.

[the_hdk]

OMG this game is indeed the Dwarf fortress of Space games

[Coinneach]

Must.Resist.Playing.This.Game.Before.Exams.

[Taklagarn]

This game do seem like you could have a lot fun with. Though I think I need to master Dwarf Fortress first!

[telesien]

This game do seem like you could have a lot fun with. Though I think I need to master Dwarf Fortress first!

It may be just me and my accounting loving brain, but I would say this one looks more manageable than DF. There is some GUI and the rest is in very neat columns and such.

[Taklagarn]

It may be just me and my accounting loving brain, but I would say this one looks more manageable than DF. There is some GUI and the rest is in very neat columns and such.

Well we will need to see if the population gets mad if the beer runs out, if they do, I'll love this game!

[Wiking]

*drool*

This looks great.

[Stuckenschmidt]

It may be just me and my accounting loving brain, but I would say this one looks more manageable than DF. There is some GUI and the rest is in very neat columns and such.

Admit it. You`re german.

[blue emu]

That Geo-Survey ship will do a great job at surveying the Solar System... but it has one major weakness: it has no Jump Drive, so it cannot jump to a new star system unless it does so in formation with a Jump-capable companion ship. For a Freighter or a Colonizer, this wouldn't be too great a handicap, since they would only be visiting explored systems anyway... but this ship is for scouting, so it should either carry its own Jump Drive or resign itself to only exploring our own star system.

Adding a Jump Drive to the design changes it radically. Jump Drives are MASSIVE... which means that they also reduce the ship's speed drastically and increase the breakdown chance. This in turn requires adding more engines and more engineering sections and more fuel tanks...

... which in turn requires more crew to operate them, who require more crew quarters...

... which again increases the tonnage, requiring still more engines...

... and before you know it, our speedy and efficient 2000-ton Geo-Survey ship has bloated into a Destroyer-sized vessel and tripled its mass, from 2000 tons to 6000 tons.



Not sure how I should handle this... I could build two classes of Geo-Survey ship, one for exploring the Sol system and one to send out to the stars; or I could build a bunch of cheap non-Jump-capable 2000-ton Geo-Survey ships plus a few big Jump-capable Tugs to move them from system to system; or I could settle for SLOW Geo-Survey ships, even though that means spending more time traveling from point A to point B, and less time actually doing their job; or I could simply build the 6000-ton model so that all of my Geo-Survey ships are capable of exploring the Galaxy on their own.

I think I'll go with that last option, even though it's the most expensive.

[Coinneach]

How long would it take the non-jump capable vessel to explore the system? Could you make do with one big tug to take assorted ones back and forth from nearby systems? Regardless, is interesting to see the impressive yet daunting ship design screens

[Fornadan]

I've been fooling around with monster myself lately, but the unresponsiveness of the UI and the need to change my computer's regional settings each time I play is kind of damping my enthusiasm. At least I have a monitor more than big enough to fit the whole game, so that at least is not a problem.


Anyone knows how to add multiple player empires to the Sol system? From the AARs in the official forum it's clear that it's possible. I've searched the forum and wiki and tried to follow the instructions I've found, but somehow I just can't get it to work

[blue emu]

How long would it take the non-jump capable vessel to explore the system? Could you make do with one big tug to take assorted ones back and forth from nearby systems? Regardless, is interesting to see the impressive yet daunting ship design screens

I could certainly go with the Fleet Tug idea... but it would have to be fairly speedy or the other ship would end up hanging around for months waiting for the Tug to show up. Jump points can be scattered billions of kilometers apart, well outside the orbit of Pluto, for instance. I'll need Tugs eventually, but I hope to get by without them in the early game, since the Tug should be designed to service specific tonnages of ships, and my ship classes will be changing as I research new techs.

Anyone knows how to add multiple player empires to the Sol system? From the AARs in the official forum it's clear that it's possible. I've searched the forum and wiki and tried to follow the instructions I've found, but somehow I just can't get it to work

No idea... I'm still a complete noob at the game myself.

The design that I finally settled on for a Geo-Survey ship turned out to be a compromise between the two designs posted earlier. By yanking off a few engines and settling for a moderate mean-time-to-breakdown, I've managed to squeeze a Jump-capable Geo-Survey ship into a 5100-ton hull. It still has good flight endurance (325 days at full power) and the same set of sensors as before, and it moves at over 3100 km/sec. A decent compromise design.

Now I'll start designing a small Fighter ship. It won't need to be jump-capable, since it will ride its Carrier between the stars and only deploy for battle... but I should design the Fighter first, since its characteristics will affect the design of the Carrier itself.

First I'll design the weapons system that the Fighter will carry... a size-4 Anti-Ship Missile.



Not an entirely satisfactory design, but it'll do.

Next I'll work on designing the Fighter to carry it... then design the Carrier to carry the Fighter.