Aurora IV - Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Emu!

[blue emu]

Hi.

I'm back.

I feel it's just about time for another Aurora forum game... perhaps one with a somewhat different flavor than the previous games.

So... here's what I propose:

- The latest game version, Aurora v7.1
- 1919 start (1.8 billion people) with a Kaiserreich-ish feel.
- Imperial German naming theme (but with English typesetting... no umlaut etc).
- No federation of friendly races this time... we will conquer the aliens or die trying.
- We start with no techs and no points to buy any.
- Most other game settings at default.
- One opposing NPR (Non-Player Race) at start, but we will set it to generate more NPRs as it explores the galaxy.
- Precursors and The Swarm turned on right from the start, Invaders turned on when we get high enough in the Tech Tree that it won't be a total debacle.

Any comments on that?

A few questions for prospective players:

What form of government would you suggest? The default is Player Race. Meritocracy is very strong, but is it appropriate? Would Monarchy be better? Insane Dictator is thematically cool, but the -75% Lab penalty is scary.

Should we form an Advisory Council and off-load some of the decision-making onto the players? How much of it? Foreign policy, naval doctrine, ship design, exploration and colonization, construction...?

Bear in mind that starting from zero, it will likely be years before we launch our first unarmed Geo-Scout ship, perhaps a decade before we poke our noses out of the Sol system, and a couple of decades before we have even a primitive Navy. Early character roles will include Scientists, Army officers, Ministers (on the Advisory Council), Bureaucrats (governors of bodies that we can't even reach yet), and later on Scouts, Geologists and eventually Naval officers.

 

[blue emu]

Just a random thought... I wonder if we could speed up the initial Geo-survey of the solar system by building (Schmetterling class) Geo-survey Fighters?

They could be assembled in a factory instead of a shipyard, and could be built in weeks instead of months. The drawback would be that we would need to build at least one "Boat Bay" PDC to serve as a base for them.

Later in the game, Geo-survey Fighters might be the fastest way to explore and characterize any system that had a large number of bodies, such as hundreds of Asteroids.

 

[jacob-Lundgren]

Go for a monarchy!

 

[Arrowfiend]

I support monarchy as well. You could have a Prussian Monarchy style government and the players could handle cabinet positions for any range of things (would be up to you). While we would direct things, you would have the final say in everything should you disagree.

 

[hyme]

Just a random thought... I wonder if we could speed up the initial Geo-survey of the solar system by building (Schmetterling class) Geo-survey Fighters?

They could be assembled in a factory instead of a shipyard, and could be built in weeks instead of months. The drawback would be that we would need to build at least one "Boat Bay" PDC to serve as a base for them.

Later in the game, Geo-survey Fighters might be the fastest way to explore and characterize any system that had a large number of bodies, such as hundreds of Asteroids.

Great idea!

 

[hyme]

I support monarchy as well. You could have a Prussian Monarchy style government and the players could handle cabinet positions for any range of things (would be up to you). While we would direct things, you would have the final say in everything should you disagree.

Agree

 

[blue emu]

Schmetterling Geo-survey Fighter

Great idea!

This is the low-tech version, which can be built with NP engine tech plus a bit of research (Geo sensors, FTR Engineering sections, etc).

Schmetterling class Survey Craft 395 tons 12 Crew 122.8 BP TCS 7.9 TH 8 EM 0
1012 km/s Armour 1-4 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/1 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 2.21 Years MSP 19 AFR 12% IFR 0.2% 1YR 5 5YR 79 Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1

8 EP Test FTR NP Engine (1) Power 8 Fuel Use 89.1% Signature 8 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 10.2 billion km (116 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1) 1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

They pack nine per Airbase (assuming my usual four Hangar Decks per base).

 

[TheExecuter]

Subscribed.

I see fighters are available at game start now?

Wish I had time to keep up with this game.

 

[blue emu]

I see fighters are available at game start now?

Anything of 500 tons displacement or less is treated as a Fighter and can be built in factories (instead of shipyards) and requires a Hangar (on land or in a Carrier).

The game was recently patched to eliminate an exploit that I pointed out... Active Sensors smaller than 0.3 Hull Squares require less than 1 crew, which gets rounded down to zero, so you can make a civilian "Fighter" that has minimal sensors but no crew, and just drop it on a jump point permanently as an early-warning outpost. With the new patch, ships have a minimum of 1 crew, even if they contain no components at all. So you can still do it, but it costs crew.

"Fighters" can even be civilian designs... if they don't have an engine (civilian engines need to be at least 25 hull squares = 1250 tons, which makes it impossible to put a civilian engine in a Fighter).

Horcher class Sensor Platform 250 tons 11 Crew 41.6 BP TCS 5 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 Sensors 6/6/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 104 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 2


Active Search Sensor MR7-R100 1955 (1) GPS 1200 Range 7.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1) Sensitivity 6 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 6m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

 

[hyme]

Anything of 500 tons displacement or less is treated as a Fighter and can be built in factories (instead of shipyards) and requires a Hangar (on land or in a Carrier).

The game was recently patched to eliminate an exploit that I pointed out... Active Sensors smaller than 0.3 Hull Squares require less than 1 crew, which gets rounded down to zero, so you can make a civilian "Fighter" that has minimal sensors but no crew, and just drop it on a jump point permanently as an early-warning outpost. With the new patch, ships have a minimum of 1 crew, even if they contain no components at all. So you can still do it, but it costs crew.

"Fighters" can even be civilian designs... if they don't have an engine (civilian engines need to be at least 25 hull squares = 1250 tons, which makes it impossible to put a civilian engine in a Fighter).

If a civilian fighter can't have a civilian engine how would it work? Would you have to tug it everywhere?

 

[blue emu]

OK. I've started the game... it looks good except that our chosen government form Imperial Monarchy starts with a -60% penalty on the number of Research Labs. No big deal... we'll just build more.

LOADS of starting minerals on Earth... possibly the best home-world mineral start that I've ever seen.

First report coming up soon.

If a civilian fighter can't have a civilian engine how would it work? Would you have to tug it everywhere?

Just build a utility vessel with a Boat Bay, and use that to deploy them one-by-one. For mass deployment, wait until you can build Light Carriers.

 

[blue emu]

Aurora IV - Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Emu! - Update 1

January 1st, 1919.

With the smashing success of the Michael offensives in the spring of 1918, the remains of the Allied armies were chased off the continent of Europe before American troops arrived to support them. France was forced out of the war immediately, and the Americans, deprived of forward deployment areas and facing the prospect of interdiction by U-Boats based on the French Atlantic coast, lost most of their ardor for entering the war. With no realistic prospect of support from any quarter, the British entered negotiations for a compromise peace which conceded the Kaiser hegemony over Europe and access to much of the world's colonial wealth.

The war was won! Got mit uns! Deutchland uber alles!

In the same year (1918) in Berlin, the Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics... a 39-year-old professor of physics named Albert Einstein... was working on some further elaborations to his 1916 paper on the fundamental structure of space-time, when he made the first of a series of startling discoveries...

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Welcome to our new forum game, Aurora IV - Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Emu!

We will be using the latest v7.1 update to Aurora, with a January 1919 start (1.8 billion people), a German theme, and Imperial Monarchy as our government type. This has a few drawbacks (the -60% penalty on starting Labs, to name the most painful penalty) but should provide lots of flavor.

Game set-up:

Planet Earth, January 1919:

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

Leutnant Henning Joachim Heinrich von Mollendorf reporting for duty. Glory to the Empire.

 

[TheExecuter]

Yes.

Allow me to volunteer to crew one of our exploration vessels / fighters.

I'm going to die in space!

 

[blue emu]

First a few details on what we've started with, then some brain-storming.

As mentioned above, our starting home-world minerals are excellent:

Duranium - 418,500
Neutronium - 272,160
Corbomite - 171,360
Tritanium - 139,680
Boronide - 478,900
Mercassium - 512,640
Vendarite - 338,580
Sorium - 434,160
Uridium - 426,060
Corundium - 191,880
Gallicite - 435,780

That's pretty impressive. Only Neutronium and Corundium seem a bit light, and of those only Corundium really matters for the early game.

Our starting scientists are also pretty decent, although we have no weapon scientists at all... no Energy Weapon, Missile or Kinetic experts. On the plus side, all of the other fields are covered (we even have TWO Power and Propulsion scientists).

Our starting compliment of only 7 Labs (instead of the 18 Labs that our population would give us under the default "Player Race" government, or the 27 Labs that we would have started with under "Meritocracy") will handicap us for the early years of the game. One of our top priorities must be to research the tech that allows us to build more Labs.

Speaking of building stuff... with 1919 techs, we have a very limited choice of stuff to build. Financial Centers. Life-support Infrastructure. Maintenance Facilities. Maintenance supplies. Academies (to speed up Leader generation). That's it. No other choices. We must tech up before we can build any Factories, Mines, Labs, Shipyards, Tracking Stations, etc.

So... starting builds will be NOTHING until we have amassed a stockpile of minerals, then some Academies to speed up our generation of new scientists... hopefully we will get a few weapons experts by the time we have weapons techs available to research.

Our starting research will be focused entirely on cracking into Trans-Newtonian theory, so that we can start building more Labs. Seven Labs is just pitiful.

Any comments or advice?

Who wants to serve on the Advisory Council, and in what capacity?

EDIT: Trans-Newtonian Tech (the prerequisite for building more Labs) will complete in two years... on Christmas day, 1920.

 

[Arrowfiend]

When starting with conventional tech, is there an ingame difference between starting in 1919 and, say, 1960?

Also, since we are playing in a Kaiserreich-esque setting, I'll be Colonel Manfred "the Red Baron" von Richthofen, a major leader in the soon to be formed German Airforce (whenever it's formed).

 

[blue emu]

When starting with conventional tech, is there an ingame difference between starting in 1919 and, say, 1960?

In my games, yes... because I look up the actual world population at that date and start with that. Population affects a lot of things, such as income and number of starting installations (Labs, Factories, etc).

In the base game, no effect.

 

[Arrowfiend]

In my games, yes... because I look up the actual world population at that date and start with that. Population affects a lot of things, such as income and number of starting installations (Labs, Factories, etc).

In the base game, no effect.

Gotcha. Anyways, is there anything we can build that will speed up the acquisition of minerals, thus allowing us to build up everything faster? Financial centers maybe? In any 4X game I like to build up my economy before going after anything else, since money is, after all, power.

 

[blue emu]

Gotcha. Anyways, is there anything we can build that will speed up the acquisition of minerals, thus allowing us to build up everything faster? Financial centers maybe? In any 4X game I like to build up my economy before going after anything else, since money is, after all, power.

I've listed everything we can build at this point. Financial centers give extra cash, but we'll be rolling in money for the first few decades anyway... our population is way higher than our ability to spend money, at this early point in the game.

Two years from now, when Trans-Newtonian Tech pops, we will gain the ability to gradually convert our 20th-century Conventional Industry (CI) to Trans-Newtonian Industry of various sorts. This is a MAJOR step forward.

Each Conventional Industry generates one point each of factory production, mining production and fuel refining. When converted to TN Industry, it must specialize in only one field (so each Industry now generates only one type of output instead of all three) but it produces TEN points of output instead of 1/1/1. Further techs boost that ten-to-one figure, eventually (much later in the game) reaching sixty-to-one.

The specialized TN Industry falls into five categories (instead of just factory / mines / refining): factories, mines, refining, fighter factories and ordinance (missile) factories. Typically, I would start with a massive conversion from CI => TN Factories, which will speed up all the subsequent mine / refinery / etc conversions (which rely on factories for their conversion). That's why I want to build up a mineral stockpile while researching the needed techs... for a while, we will be using minerals faster than we are mining them, because I intend to prioritize TN Factories over TN Mines.

EDIT: We have built up a surplus of a few thousand minerals, and I've added two new Academies to the build queue. This will be our only build until TN tech pops. It will triple the rate at which we gain new Scientists (and other leaders, of which we already have plenty). Hopefully we will have weapons scientists by the time we need some.

 

[hyme]

Who wants to serve on the Advisory Council, and in what capacity?

Me, me, me. For what capacity I don't really care. I do think we should build up life-support Infrastructure for Mars or any other areas. What trade goods does earth produce?