Aurora, a 4X strategy game. ITT: Terrible spreadsheet jokes. - Games

Aurora is a 4X game where you have to build an empire. It's more in-depth than Dwarf Fortress. And it has even less graphics! Your goal is to create a star-spanning empire. Well, that's most people's goal. As far as I know there's no end condition on the game, but most empires eventually come to an end due to crumbling under bureaucracy, or getting wiped out by an angry AI race that's forty years ahead of you in technology. You can research things, use those things to design components, research the components, then design ships using those components and finally build them. Then you get to watch as that angry AI race destroys them in about thirty seconds. You'll need an imagination to properly enjoy this game. Done well, the AAR reports can be a pretty amazing read. Oh yeah, you'll also need at least a 1048 x 1280 monitor. If you don't have one, you can try this: [quote] How to run Aurora in a playable state on small monitors: 1. Game Parameters > Reduced Height Windows 2. Taskbar > Pin to right of desktop 3. Download and run [URL="http://www.digitallis.co.uk/pc/ResizeEnable/"]ResizeEnable[/URL] [/quote] I'm not sure if it's worth showing screenshots because there's basically nothing worth looking at, but here's the system map: [IMG]http://img1.uploadscreenshot.com/images/main/2/3421005159.jpg[/IMG] Pretty much the most graphical screen in the game. And finally, have some AAR excerpts for light reading. [quote] The two jump squadrons of the Second Striking Force arrived in Archangelsk without interference. The entry of the First Striking Force did not go so smoothly. As soon as the eighteen Commonwealth warships jumped in they detected two thermal signatures right on top of them. Within seconds Tsar Alexander II was hit eleven times by 15cm Near Ultraviolet Lasers. Fortunately for the battlecruiser her armour was thick enough to withstand each individual hit, even though laser fire penetrated more deeply than missile warheads, so she suffered internal damage only when two hits struck the same area of her armour. Even so, she lost three engines and half her missile launchers. With weapons and active sensors inoperable due to the effects of transit, there was no way for the Commonwealth force to immediately reply. Rear Admiral Scott ordered the battlecruiser to retreat back into Budapest while the rest of the Commonwealth ships desperately tried to get their systems online. Ten seconds after the first volley the Angel defenders fired again. Peter the Great was hit five times and Yuri Gagarin nine times, although neither battlecruiser received any internal damage. Rear Admiral Scott was determined not to be stopped by just two defending ships so he held his position. The Angel warships, which had backed off to thirty thousand kilometres from the jump point, fired again, hitting the battlecruisers a further fifteen times and causing considerable damage. Peter the Great lost four engines, two launchers and half her magazine capacity. Yuri Gagarin lost three engines, two launchers, her active sensor, one of her fire control system and two of her four magazines. Realising his force was taking unsustainable damage, Rear Admiral Scott ordered both crippled battlecruisers, including his own flagship, back into Budapest, leaving Valentina Tereshkova and the escorts to fight on, assuming they could get their weapons into action. A retreat of the whole force at this point would have meant the damage to the battlecruisers had accomplished nothing. As the battlecruisers retreated, the escort cruisers Iroquois and Sioux and the destroyer escorts Neptune and Téméraire got their weapons and sensors back online, identifying the two Angel ships as the laser-armed destroyers that recently entered Budapest. The 10cm advanced railguns on Neptune and Téméraire only had a 10,000 kilometre range so the Commonwealth destroyers tried to close on the Angel warships, which moved away to keep the range open. Both escort cruisers began launching their anti-missiles in offensive mode. Even as Iroquois and Sioux fired their missiles the Angel warships fired again. Valentina Tereshkova was hit several times and vanished in a blinding flash, leaving nothing but scattered debris. The damage was far too light to cause such devastation so the only explanation was a catastrophic secondary explosion in her magazines. Commodore Kenneth Amalfitano, captain of the Kiowa and senior surviving officer of the First Striking Force still in Archangelsk, was momentarily stunned by the destruction of Valentina Tereshkova. He recovered quickly and ordered all the Trafalgar class escorts to charge the two Angel ships, even if they did not yet have weapons. At least they would be able to push the enemy destroyers away from the jump point. [/quote] [quote] On 9th September 2185, the 1st Xeno brigade started as usual the recovery of the alien complexes in the dig site of Hope. Their activities started 1 months earlier and they was able to recovery some mining equipment in the last days. The B Company of the 2nd Battalion, opened a gate under a long staircase. After no initial sound or movement, suddenly an intense burst of heavy machine gun fire overwhelm the company causing the immediate death of 20 soldiers. The rest of the company was able to fallback and fortify a position 300 meters away from the gate. The enemy forces were composed by a brigade-size unit of defence droid, ironically their shapes resebled an human skeleton and It seemed that their were part of a robotic combat unit used by the ruin's aliens. Xeno Brigade tried to counterattack, but failed and they were forced to call for reinforcements. [/quote] [quote] The seven Project 1204B 'Atlant-B' class missile cruisers launch at eighty-three million kilometers, dividing their five hundred and sixty P-505 Garpun-C anti-ship missiles between fourteen of the sixteen enemy ships. The four Project 1200B escort cruisers launch their Palash missiles against the other two targets. The Soviet stocks of the P-506 Palash-B are running low though and only Admiral Nakhimov has the latest missile. The other three ships are using the older and slower P-500 Palash-A. The missiles streak toward the enemy fleet and Rear Admiral Zhukov can only hope they arrive in time to prevent the destruction of the fleeing Soviet scout. Thirty-eight minutes after launch the P-505 Garpun-Cs reach their targets and all fourteen targets are obliterated, half of them suffering catastrophic magazine explosions. The salvo of twenty-four Palash-Bs from Admiral Nakhimov is also sufficient to destroy the last Gotterdammerung, leaving just one Goavelha ship. Given the ease with which the Goavelha fleet was annihilated, Rear Admiral Zhukov could be accused of overkill but with the reverses suffered by the Soviet Union in recent years, he wasn't taking any chances. Eleven minutes later the slower Palash-A missiles arrive and the last Goavelha warship is blown to pieces. Another one-sided victory for Rear Admiral Vadim Zhukov and a further boost to Soviet morale. [/quote] There. By the way, all figures and names from those AARs are taken directly out of the game. [URL="http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,10.0.html"]Download here.[/URL] [quote] When it installs, do NOT let it overwrite any DLL files. [/quote] [QUOTE=RearAdmiral;34588832]You may want to include a link to the [url=http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Links]wiki[/url] in the OP. It has tutorials, both quickstart and some that are more in depth on it.[/QUOTE]

I used to love this game to bits, then it kept crashing all the time and I got bored :/

I tried this once, more confusing then dwarf fortress.

[QUOTE=Thorny;34556449]I used to love this game to bits, then it kept crashing all the time and I got bored :/[/QUOTE] Seems much better now, I haven't had a single crash yet.

I played this for a bit, loved it, then left it for a while for whatever reason and have yet to summon the effort to relearn it all again

more complicated that dwarf fortress? hell, i didnt think that was possible. downloading now

I am running out of resources :tinfoil:

More complicated than DF ? AWESOME Requires imagination to play and enjoy it to it's full majesty? AWESOME It's a SCI-FICTION where you are being owned by some evil AI race? EVEN MORE AWESOME Thanks OP, Now I will be fired from work by playing this game all the time and eventually I will die from lack of sleep... God bless you!

Hey RearAdmiral, aren't you supposed to be doing work tonight? Yes, Yes I am. Are you going to learn how to play Aurora instead? Yes, Yes I am.

Ah, I used to play this but it seems like it took 5 minutes to load every 30 days after a certain point. It's great fun, but can be a huge timesink.

Well this game is nothing if not complicated.

I tried this once, more confusing then dwarf fortress. ______________________________ enjoy game so much! [url=http://www.storeingame.com/]wow gold[/url] [url=ttp://www.buymaplestory.com/]Buy Maplestory Mesos[/url] [url=http://www.2joygame.com/]wow gold[/url]

I have three defensive ships, and due to a large cockup in RnD they only have five missiles each. I really hope nobody wonders into this system by mistake. :rolleye:

Aurora is a fantastic game. I just wish spacemaster mode wasn't such a pain to go through to spruce things up.

[QUOTE=zhuzhuxiao;34570124]THANKS FOR QUOTING IT[/QUOTE] Oh my god is that a signature.

The best thing about this you can design everything. Don't want just simple missiles that are short ranged and slow? How about making a second stage, turning the range to 750 million km, putting in 6 small high explosive warheads riding lightning fast rockets? ICBM: Do it yourself.

I tried to play this once. [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12875849/jotain/1274804063257.jpg[/img] That's pretty much what happened, haven't tried it again. Haven't had the time to try it again though.

[QUOTE=Impact1986;34570399]The best thing about this you can design everything. Don't want just simple missiles that are short ranged and slow? How about making a second stage, turning the range to 750 million km, putting in 6 small high explosive warheads riding lightning fast rockets? ICBM: Do it yourself.[/QUOTE] Box launchers are [B]hilarious[/B]

[QUOTE=Impact1986;34570399]The best thing about this you can design everything. Don't want just simple missiles that are short ranged and slow? How about making a second stage, turning the range to 750 million km, putting in 6 small high explosive warheads riding lightning fast rockets? ICBM: Do it yourself.[/QUOTE] ... I think I need to give this another try. I did some fiddling around to make sure it displays properly on my 1366x768 laptop screen.

oh god this game i remember trying it and i had a headache and i just gave up

There is a line between complexity/difficulty and enjoyement. This game is to much of work for my taste. Although I really appreciate complex and challenging games.

Anyone who has played the absolute torment of every aspect of human mind that is called Sword of the Stars 2. Is perfectly capable of playing this game. Trust me, getting past turn 200 in UNPATCHED SotS II without having to go throught 5 years of anger management course is a feat only the strongest can achieve.

I'd say this is a lot more complicated than SoTS.

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;34572040]I'd say this is a lot more complicated than SoTS.[/QUOTE] At least this game works.

It took me a few weeks to learn how to play this properly (admittedly I wasn't very contributed to the effort), but once I finally started getting into it, it was pretty damn fun.

the best thing I remember about this game was colonizing planets and creating mining outposts on asteroids and moons timing supply shuttles between asteroids/comets as they pass through your solar system is fun

Having explored and geologically surveyed all three systems leading off from Sol I have come to the conclusion there is nothing worth having there at all, aside from a habitable with only 0.1 access to minerals, which is incredibly shit. [editline]6th February 2012[/editline] Also, my single jump-capable gravitational survey ship is slowly breaking down and it's stuck in proxima centauri. :v:

Should I start researching fighter engines and the Pebble bed reactor technology? Or can I start designing and building my first geological survey ship already? There doesn't seem to be any propulsion methods available whatsoever. Also how can I increase the actual protection of Earth? Oh and I started building 3 research labs with 70% capacity of my industry. Good or bad idea? Man I need tips to get my bearings with this *edit* Still metric fucktons of easier to understand than SoTS 2.

Are there some nice and comprehesible tutorials for Aurora? OP should've included them, something that helps you get started out, especially with all the setup stuff

[QUOTE=smeismastger;34574234]Should I start researching fighter engines and the Pebble bed reactor technology? Or can I start designing and building my first geological survey ship already? There doesn't seem to be any propulsion methods available whatsoever. Also how can I increase the actual protection of Earth? Oh and I started building 3 research labs with 70% capacity of my industry. Good or bad idea? Man I need tips to get my bearings with this *edit* Still metric fucktons of easier to understand than SoTS 2.[/QUOTE] What you need to do is design the engines before you can put them in your design - press F5 to load the class windows, and then press the 'Design tech' button. Once you've done that, assign the technology as research on the research screen. It'll be under propulsion and power. Geological survey sensors are available with no research or designing needed, I believe. You just need the engine. I'd avoid building the research labs at the moment - I coped fine with only the starting few up til around the 2040s. Instead, construct construction factories or infrastructure.