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

[QUOTE=smeismastger;38636104]I tried conventional start as Warsaw pact with NPR nations and unions on Earth. After one year Australia declared war on me, destroyed a ICBM base or two until I ordered ground units to attack Australia and realize that they literally have no ground units thus providing instant victory. This apparently scared China, because it declared war on me couple of months later, and started attacking my ICBM bases with meson cannons and size 1 point-defence missiles. I launched all of my nukes at China, and while waiting for the ICBM missiles to come from orbit I got several reports of nuclear explosions everywhere that weren't targeted at me. Everyone declared war at everyone. In the midst of the gigantic nuclear shitstorm I noticed that Australia had somehow established base in the fucking moon and had evacuated it's population there. It was then I realized that Australia had planned for this all along.[/QUOTE] OH I always wanted to try multiple "races" on a single planet, any howto ?

[QUOTE=Avager;38636388]OH I always wanted to try multiple "races" on a single planet, any howto ?[/QUOTE] I believe you need to set it up through spessmaster. No idea exactly how though. Also don't nuke your own planet, raises radiation and other good shit.

-snip- Found the galaxy map.

Are savegames compatible with the new update?

I don't like the new UI. I can't really tell what the fuck is going on with the new star system map.

How is it worse? I haven't seen it yet, but how can it be worse than what it was previously?

Wait, the UI changed? I hadn't noticed

[QUOTE=Twistshock;38637265]I believe you need to set it up through spessmaster. No idea exactly how though. Also don't nuke your own planet, raises radiation and other good shit.[/QUOTE] Earth can stay livable up to 470 nukes from what I'm told. Nuke for all your heart's content. [editline]29th November 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=DarkMonkey;38640001]Wait, the UI changed? I hadn't noticed[/QUOTE] It hasn't changed at all.

I haven't tried a pre-Transnewtonian start yet. Anything I need to know? Also Smeismastger how do I play a game like you have with different countries and stuff because that sounds awesome.

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;38641560]I haven't tried a pre-Transnewtonian start yet. Anything I need to know? Also Smeismastger how do I play a game like you have with different countries and stuff because that sounds awesome.[/QUOTE] You have to create the NPR nations/unions/alliances manually in the System Information screen with Space Master turned on. Click on Earth and there's a button labeled as "Create Empire"

The wiki page must be out of date because it looks 10 times different from the original map. Holy christ nevermind, it was a menu within a menu. Also, it keep crashing on me any time I select a commander or unit.

[QUOTE=Swilly;38644117]The wiki page must be out of date because it looks 10 times different from the original map. Holy christ nevermind, it was a menu within a menu. Also, it keep crashing on me any time I select a commander or unit.[/QUOTE] Care posting picture of the map on wiki you are referring to ? edit: OH well, I see you found the "issue"... somehow I didn't see 2nd and 3rd line when I typed this.

[QUOTE=smeismastger;38641720]You have to create the NPR nations/unions/alliances manually in the System Information screen with Space Master turned on. Click on Earth and there's a button labeled as "Create Empire"[/QUOTE] Bear in mind that if you make them as an NPR they'll be beyond your control and as soon as they're able they'll try to nuke you into oblivion. To prevent that, you have to play each side yourself (I'm pretty sure). Also, go into SM mode and go into the intelligence/foreign relations window and set each race to have a fixed relationship so that you can maintain treaties and shit if you want to.

So I started a new game as a Corporate Government, wound up calling myself the Terran Initiative although I may change that. I'm trying to think of some more flavour stuff to make this second playthrough a little interesting. Also started designing my ships from scratch. Accidently launched a class of Geosurvey ship that had an average maintenance life of three months. Those that perished in the inevitable engine explosions will be remembered forever [sp]AS UNNEEDED EXPENSES IN MY CORPORATE PROFIT MARGIN[/sp]

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;38666180]So I started a new game as a Corporate Government, wound up calling myself the Terran Initiative although I may change that. I'm trying to think of some more flavour stuff to make this second playthrough a little interesting. Also started designing my ships from scratch. Accidently launched a class of Geosurvey ship that had an average maintenance life of three months. Those that perished in the inevitable engine explosions will be remembered forever [sp]AS UNNEEDED EXPENSES IN MY CORPORATE PROFIT MARGIN[/sp][/QUOTE] SM in a few more civilian shipping lines. Use their names as the megacorps who design your components. The most relevant name/highest share price gets first dibs whenever it comes time to design something new, and you can subsidize them as payment.

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;38666180]So I started a new game as a Corporate Government, wound up calling myself the Terran Initiative although I may change that. I'm trying to think of some more flavour stuff to make this second playthrough a little interesting. Also started designing my ships from scratch. Accidently launched a class of Geosurvey ship that had an average maintenance life of three months. Those that perished in the inevitable engine explosions will be remembered forever [sp]AS UNNEEDED EXPENSES IN MY CORPORATE PROFIT MARGIN[/sp][/QUOTE] Yo, in the ship design window, there's a tiny checkbox near the components list called "Commercial only". That way you can avoid accidentally creating ships that are technically classed as "Military", therefore avoiding maintainance supply requirements. Anyway, in one of my glorious Soviet games I attempted to establish a peaceful diplomatic relationship with alien empire known as "Pushkar Coalition", a race of floating jellyfishes. I sneaked a espionage team into their planet with a fast, low thermal shuttle. No data has been gained so far, but year after deploying the team the Pushkar Coalition declared war upon me. Since I only had 10 corvettes, I had to tactical genius their fleets a lot. For 7 of their ships I only lost one corvette. But now for the first time, the aliens have breached Sol and I am experiencing my first use of fighters. Very cheap and mobile planetary defence I must say, I should make a habit of using them. [IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/25sy7ap.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/358xkqp.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/28s0bjs.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/nckp09.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/ngo61.png[/IMG] Pardon the rude name, but since there's about whopping 20 fighters in this squadron alone, I couldn't come up with a better name. Nevertheless, its for the good of the Soviet Union. [video=youtube;1iJRwSTJVuQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iJRwSTJVuQ&list=FL7HADrtOdQS2aZb0bHtMgGg[/video]

Golly, my system observation radar has detected another jump-point transit. They just don't give up do they? [IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/294l260.png[/IMG] [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] For those interested, this is the radar complex I mentioned. [code]Ural class Sensor Outpost 12*450 tons 352 Crew 10132 BP TCS 249 TH 0 EM 0 Armour 5-47 Sensors 1200/2400 Damage Control Rating 30 PPV 0 Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1 Troop Capacity: 1 Battalion A-Vympel-500-A (4x10) Range 1000 km TS: 40000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit Sol-Pattern System Observation Radar (1) GPS 288000 Range 6*309.8m km Resolution 120 Thermal Sensor Complex TH50-1200 (1) Sensitivity 1200 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 1200m km EM Sensor complex EM50-1200 (1) Sensitivity 1200 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 1200m km This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 5 sections [/code] [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] [IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/flkoef.png[/IMG] [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] [IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/1htraw.png[/IMG] [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] [IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/2eoadl1.png[/IMG] Thought they are still at Ion engine tech, if this is their way of keeping tabs on us then I wouldn't say that it's working. Good practice for our brave pilots nonetheless.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/AjBCN.png[/IMG] Prior to the endless 91's, I get a 3061 of a similar error. The funny part is that the save still appears on restart. [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] The saves are empty. No selected or generated races.

[QUOTE]This usually means either you missed a step in the installation process or you live in a country where the decimal separator is a comma rather than a period. If its the latter, you'll have to change your regional settings. If it's not the decimal separator, reread the install instructions and just make sure you followed every step: [url]http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1830.0.html[/url] Steve[/QUOTE]

Close out aurora completely, uninstall it completely, reinstall. [url=http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5399.msg55465.html#msg55465]Somebody else had this issue on the forum and that's how they managed to fix it.[/url]

I've followed the install instructions to the letter, and my regional settings are already US. I ran the setup, kept any DLLs it whined about, unzipped the zip from the install folder into the game's folder and overwrote, and then downloaded 6.21 and overwrote aurora.exe with the new one. [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] I ended up downloading some "portable" version of 6.21 from [url=http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5663.0.html]here[/url] and it worked just fine. Weird.

Eh, mysteries of programming.

Some really useful info for using small gauss turrets as anti-missile defence, quoted from 4x aurora forums. [QUOTE=Jorgen_CAB ]If you mean 50% size reduction on your Gauss cannons then I use them on my PD turrets all the time. With enough Tracking bonus and crew grade I can sometimes get above 50% hit ratio with those guns. This means they are more effective than larger Gauss cannons. Otherwise, larger Gauss cannons are slightly more efficient against small salvoes while the smaller Gauss cannon are better against larger salvoes. If you compare performance between CIWS and regular Gauss they would have the same performance given you selected normal fire distance and 4x tracking speed with your fire control. CIWS is slightly lighter than a combined turret and fire control. I think you need four CIWS to get about the same weight to shot ratio as you would from two quad turrets and a fire control. Though, the turret can only track one incoming salvo whilst the CIWS can engage four but the turret can protect other ships in a TG the CIWS can't. I think that is my experience so far. I extensively use CIWS systems on my bigger ships that I plan to run alone with smaller escorts. I place turrets on my smaller escorts. I could also place ECM on the escorts but not on the big ship to force the enemy to start shooting at the big ship first. I don't want my much more frail escorts attacked if I can prevent it, the big ships can usually take it pretty well. In my current game I have just set up one faction who is completely relying on Gauss weapons for PD and only use missiles for offensive action. Their heavy cruiser have six CIWS with 36 total number of shots at 50%. It is escorted by three escort frigates that each has two tripple turrets and a FC for 18 total shots each. This is a total of 90 shots if the attack is directed against the cruiser at 50% efficiency. With tracking bonuses and decent crew grade (the faction start with 10% grade bonus) the weapons efficiency is very close to 50% even at game start against most offensive ASM that has a speed around 20000km/s. This means that this small group can easily fend of about 30-40 missiles per turn without breaking a sweat. The cruiser also has a 90 point shield as well as well as 10 layers of armour (this is a 28000 ton cruiser). So, penetrating their defences will take a well coordinated attack to pull of. The above cannon would have a 50% standard to hit and against a 20000km/s at 12000km/s tracking speed a penalty of 40% modified to 20% with the tracking bonus tech. With a crew grade of 10% it lands on 44%, grade 20% at 48% and grade 30% at 52%. It is then also modified with the to hit chance of the fire control which of course depend on your beam range tech. If you want to rely on gauss PD then I have found out that the missile tracking bonus tech are very important to get decent to hit ratios for them.[/QUOTE]

dakkadakkadakkadakka Also, the SM of the multiplayer game I'm in is playing the turn right now according to the dropbox. So anxiousss

Can you actually use kinetic weapons as main source of damage dealing in ship vs. ship ? I want to create now kinetic focused empire, where only energy based weaponry would be equipped on "beam frigates" (Homeworld like) and many fighter squadrons. Though, I'm afraid of this whole energy vs kinetic ranges, will kinetic be even viable in big ship vs big ship combat?

Kinetic weapons vs Energy weapons are pretty balanced. Both of them will get their shit slapped by a missile-using opponent.

[QUOTE=DarkMonkey;38707484]Kinetic weapons vs Energy weapons are pretty balanced. Both of them will get their shit slapped by a missile-using opponent.[/QUOTE] Or plasma torpedo using invaders for that matter, thought they in turn get absolutely fucked up the ass in closer ranges due to them spending the tonnage on missiles than closer range weapons. Small tonnage, fast, and low thermal railgun/gauss corvettes are very useful for that. I actually have corvette design that is sort of a U-Boat in space; 16 box launchers, 2 x 3HS (ala 300mm) gauss cannons. Both missiles and gauss weapons have been wrecking shit amongst the fleets of one certain alien Coalition that I have been duking it out with for the last decade in one of my games.

Corvettes with box launchers are the ultimate system defense. By mid-level tech you can smash two size-40 box launchers on them, if I recall correctly [editline]5th December 2012[/editline] Or was it size 80?

What you even do with missiles bigger than size 10? They cost a lot, are usually slow-, short-ranged bricks that are easy targets for point-defence and at best they are overkills. Bunch of smaller missiles with onboard radar systems is where it's at in fleet engagements, if a salvo loses it's original target, it'll guide itself towards any hostile contacts they detect. Anything bigger than 10 are used for missile stages, passive/active sensor buoys, mines, and geosurvey "satellite" buoys.

It's simply a carrier. Reduced fuel costs to fly one billion kilometers (while the corvette sits safely outside DETECTABLE sensor range and return weapons fire). Then, at the edge of PD, it splits into a bunch of small max warhead/engine submunitions with 0.01 fuel or so.