Aurora - the Dwarf Fortress of 4x Space Games?

[sbr]

blue emu started an AAR thread on this over at EUOT the other day and I decided to give it another shot.  I have not been this sucked into a game in a long, long time.  I spent most of the nicest weekend of the year inside playing this.  If you can deal with the text and menu driven game it is really interesting once you figure out what the hell is going on.

Asshole, don't tempt me into downloading it.

Do eet, you know you want to.

[MadImmortalMan]

I was reading his AAR as well. If I had downloaded this cold, there would definitely have been a learning curve of a month or so. 

[Slargos]

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Links

Your links are broken. This one works.

[sbr]

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Links

Your links are broken. This one works.

Yeah they must have moved the wiki and forums in the last year.  Here is the new link to the forums

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php#3

[Berkut]

Jesus Fucking Christ on a Interstellar Posicle.

A bit of the tutorial on creating your first warship:

Now open the Create Research Project window and change the Project  Type to Lasers. There are four background technologies for Lasers. Laser  Focal Size determines how large the laser is, how much damage it  causes, how much power it requires and the base range. Laser Wavelength  modifies the range, with longer wavelength lasers having greater range.  Capacitor Recharge Rate determines how fast the laser's power can be  recharged and therefore determines its rate of fire. Reduced Size Laser  technology, which we won't be examining in this tutorial, creates more  compact lasers that have slower rates of fire. When you first select  lasers, the program will select the best available background technology  in each category, which should create a laser design that looks like  this:

15cm C4 Near Ultraviolet Laser
Damage Output 6     Rate of Fire: 10 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 180,000 km     Laser Size: 4 HS    Laser HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 6    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 4
Cost: 29    Crew: 40
Materials Required: 5.8x Duranium  5.8x Boronide  17.4x Corundium
Development Cost for Project: 290RP

Lets go through some of the terminology. Damage Output is the  maximum damage caused by the laser, usually at point blank range. The  Rate of Fire is how often the laser fires, assuming sufficient power is  provided to the weapon. Rate of Fire is always rounded up to the nearest  5 seconds as that it is smallest time increment in Aurora. Range  Modifier is the wavelength of the weapon. Damage falls off with range  and the Max Range is equal to the maximum damage multiplied by the Range  Modifier multiplied by 10,000 km. In this case, 6 x 3 x 10,000 =  180,000 km. Laser Size is the physical size of the laser in hull spaces  (1 hull space = 50 tons). Laser HTK  is the hits-to-kill for this system. If it receives two points of  damage it is automatically destroyed. If it receives one point of damage  it has a fifty percent chance of bring destroyed. The Power Requirement  is the amount of energy that must to be sent to the weapon by power  reactors before it can fire. Power Recharge is the maximum amount of  power that can be sent to the weapon in 5 seconds. The rest are similar  to previous systems. 
Note that the rate of fire is 10 seconds because only four power can  be sent to the weapon every 5 seconds and it needs 6 power. If your  capacitor recharge rate technology was 6 instead of 4, you could build a  15cm laser that fired every 5 seconds. We are wasting power a little  here as we are using a capacitor that allows 8 power to the laser every  10 seconds and we only need 6. If you change the capacitor recharge rate  dropdown to 3 instead of 4 then the laser will still fire every 10  seconds but it will be a little cheaper to manufacture.
Press Create for the laser then change the focal size to 10cm.  Now you have a laser that should appear as below. This 10cm laser only  does half the damage of the 15cm per shot but fires every 5 seconds so  the overall damage output over time is the same as the 15cm. Its damage  output per hull space over time is actually greater as it is only 75% of  the HS..  Because it only has half the range, an equal speed or faster ship  equipped with a 15cm weapon would stay out of range and the 15cm has  more crunch effect as hits from that weapon will penetrate more armour.  The 15cm is superior as an anti-ship weapon. However, fast firing beam  weapons make good point defence weapons. In the case of point defence,  overall rate of fire becomes more important than damage per hit.  Therefore press Create for this weapon too so we have two different  lasers. Go to the Research tab of the Economics window and Instant our  new weapons.

10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser
Damage Output 3     Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 90,000 km     Laser Size: 3 HS    Laser HTK: 1
Power Requirement: 3    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 3
Cost: 15    Crew: 30
Materials Required: 3x Duranium  3x Boronide  9x Corundium
Development Cost for Project: 150RP

  Fire Control Systems  Next, we will create some beam fire control systems. Once again we  need to Instant some technology before we begin the design process. Go  to the Research tab and give yourself Beam Fire Control Range 16,000 km,  Beam Fire Control Range 24,000 km, Fire Control Speed Rating 2000 km/s  and Fire Control Speed Rating 3000 km/s. Now open the Create Research  Project window and select Beam Fire Control. There are seven different  parameters, although we don't need to bother with the last three for  now. The first two will show the best available technology for beam fire  control range and tracking speed and there is no need to change these.  Most of the decision making for standard ship-based fire control systems  is in the third and fourth dropdowns. At the moment the beam fire  control should appear as below.

Fire Control S01 24-3000
50% Accuracy at Range: 24,000 km     Tracking Speed: 3000 km/s
Size: 1 HS    HTK: 1    Cost: 11    Crew: 5
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Materials Required: 2.75x Duranium  8.25x Uridium
Development Cost for Project: 110RP

The 50% Accuracy at Range at 24,000 km simply means that any beam  weapon linked to this fire control will have a base chance to hit of 50%  at 24,000 km. At shorter ranges the base chance to hit will increase at  a linear rate, reaching 100% at 0 km. At longer ranges the chance to  hit will decrease at a linear rate, reaching zero at twice the 50%  range, in this case 48,000 km. In effect, every beam fire control you  design will have its own to hit chart which is shown when you add the  fire control to a class design. Our 15cm Laser has a max range of  180,000 km but linked to this fire control as it currently stands, it  would be ineffective beyond 48,000 km because it wouldn't be able to hit  anything. The Tracking Speed of 3000 km/s means that the fire control  will be able to track any target moving at 3000 km/s or less without any  penalty to the base to hit chance. Against targets moving faster than  3000 km/s, the base chance to hit is modified by (Tracking Speed /  Target Speed). For example, against a target moving at 4000 km/s, the  base chance to hit would be modified by 3000/4000 or 0.75.
At the moment the fire control is only 1 hull space. By using the  third dropdown, Fire Control Size vs Range, we can increase the range of  the fire control by increasing its size. Change this dropdown to read  "Fire Control 2x Size 2x Range". The fire control is now two hull spaces  and the 50% accuracy at range has doubled to 48,000 km. Change it to  "Fire Control 4x Size 4x Range", so it appears as below. With a 50%  range of 96,000 km, the max range is 192,000 km so it will match up with  our 15cm Laser. Change the name if you like and Create this fire  control system.

Fire Control S04 96-3000 
50% Accuracy at Range: 96,000 km     Tracking Speed: 3000 km/s
Size: 4 HS    HTK: 1    Cost: 43    Crew: 20
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Materials Required: 10.75x Duranium  32.25x Uridium
Development Cost for Project: 430RP

The 10cm laser is intended for use against missiles so the 3000  km/s tracking speed of the above fire control will be of no use to us.  Even against a missile travelling at just 15,000 km/s the base chance to  hit will be divided by 5 (3000/15000 = 0.2). Therefore we need to  increase the tracking speed considerably. You can do this in the similar  way to increasing the range. Change the Fire Control Size vs Tracking  Speed to "Fire Control 4x Size 4x Tracking Speed". Now we have a  problem. Although the tracking speed is 12,000 km/s, which is much  better, the fire control is now 16 HS,  which is huge. This is because the multipliers for size and range are  cumulative. However, as this fire control is intended to engage missiles  at very close range, we no longer need the range multiplier so reduce  that to the original "Normal Size Normal Range" setting. Our beam fire  control should now look like this:

Fire Control S04 24-12000
50% Accuracy at Range: 24,000 km     Tracking Speed: 12000 km/s
Size: 4 HS    HTK: 1    Cost: 43    Crew: 20
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Materials Required: 10.75x Duranium  32.25x Uridium
Development Cost for Project: 430RP

The tracking speed of 12,000 km still isn't enough to avoid any  penalty to the base to hit chance if you are shooting at a 15,000 km  missile, but as you will likely engage missiles at a range of 10,000 km,  just before they strike the ship, the base chance to hit will be fairly  high anyway. To build a faster tracking fire control, you would need to  research the next level of fire control tracking technology. Go to the  Research tab of the Economics window and Instant our new fire control  systems.
Time to get started on our warship design. Open the F5 Class Design  window and press New. Add one each of the two lasers and two fire  control systems. Your design should appear as below. 

Ark Royal class Cruiser    1050 tons     133 Crew     177 BP      TCS 21  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-9     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 7
Annual Failure Rate: 8%    IFR: 0.1%    Maintenance Capacity 105 MSP    Max Repair 43 MSP

Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range N/A

15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 90,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 3    ROF 5        3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Before I go into detail on the information, change to the Full  Summary tab. For the lasers the information presented includes the name,  how many of that system are in the design, the range, the tracking  speed, the power requirements in terms of power to fire and power  required per 5 sec, the range modifier, the rate of fire and the damage  output in 10,000 km steps. We'll get back to why weapons (as well as  fire controls) have a tracking speed in a moment. The fire control  information includes the name, how many of the system are in the design,  the maximum range, the tracking speed and the chance to hit in 10,000  km steps. On the right hand side of the Full Summary tab there is a  section called Range Bands. If you change the Range Band to 20,000 km  then the ten damage steps following each of the lasers and the ten  to-hit chances following the fire controls will change from 10,000 km  steps to 20,000 km steps. Compare the following to the original above.

15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 4 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 90,000km     TS: 3000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 3    ROF 5        3 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     58 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

If you choose other range bands, the damage and to-hit chances will  change accordingly. Underneath Range Bands is Target Speed. If you  change Target Speed it will affect the to-hit chances of the fire  control systems. For 1000 km/s, 2000 km/s and 3000 km/s there should be  no change as the both fire controls can handle those target speeds. the  5000 and 10,000 km/s steps should change the to-hit chances for the S04  96-3000 fire control as that is only designed to handle targets up to  3000 km/s but the faster tracking fire control will be unaffected. At  20,000 km/s the other fire control is affected too because its max  tracking speed is only 12,000 km/s. The Range Bands and Target Speed  settings allow you to check how your weapon and fire control designs  would perform against targets at different ranges and different speeds.
Earlier I mentioned that weapons have a tracking speed as well. While  the fire control tracking speed is mainly concerned with tracking the  target and calculating where to fire the weapons, the weapon tracking  speed is the capability of the weapon to fire instantly in that  direction when ordered to do so by the fire control. The base weapon  tracking speed is equal to either the speed of the ship or your Empire's  best Fire Control Speed Rating tech, whichever is greater. Your best  Fire Control Speed Rating is 3000 km/s at the moment and as that is  higher than the current ship speed of 1 km/s (it has no engines), then  3000 km/s is the weapon tracking speed. Try adding eight of our nuclear  thermal engines to the class (remember to use the military version). It  should appear as below. Note that because the ship speed is now 3174  km/s, that is higher than the Empire's Fire Control Speed Rating of 3000  km/s so the weapon tracking speed is now 3174 km/s. In essence, a  faster ship has a better chance of quickly pointing its weapons in the  right direction.

Ark Royal class Cruiser    3150 tons     333 Crew     283 BP      TCS 63  TH 200  EM 0
3174 km/s     Armour 1-19     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 7
Annual Failure Rate: 79%    IFR: 1.1%    Maintenance Capacity 56 MSP    Max Repair 43 MSP

Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (8)    Power 25    Fuel Use 100%    Signature 25    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 28.6 billion km   (104 days at full power)

15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 180,000km     TS: 3174 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 3    ROF 10        6 4 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Range 90,000km     TS: 3174 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 3    ROF 5        3 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     58 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

When a fire control tries to direct a weapon, the lowest tracking  speed of the fire control or the weapon is used to calculate the chance  to hit the target. In other words, it is no use having a fast fire  control tracking speed if the weapon can't point in the right direction  quickly enough and it is no use having a fast weapon tracking speed if  the fire control can't make use of it. You need to match weapons with  appropriate fire control systems as part of your class design process.

I cannot decide if this is fucking awesome or terrifying.

[Syt]

I think it also lets you design missiles by range, speed, payload, guidance system ... I may try this again when my new laptop with higher resolution arrives.

[grumbler]

This is starting to get addictive.  It makes WitP-AE look simple, but things seem to make sense.

[Ed Anger]

Looking at the ship design stuff,  I am getting a Traveller High Guard flashback.

[Slargos]

Looking at the ship design stuff,  I am getting a Traveller High Guard flashback.

Looking at it, I'm getting epilepsy. 

[Barrister]

Looking at the ship design stuff,  I am getting a Traveller High Guard flashback.

WHy'd you have to say the T word.

Now I'll have to take a look at this...

[Ed Anger]

Looking at the ship design stuff,  I am getting a Traveller High Guard flashback.

WHy'd you have to say the T word.

Now I'll have to take a look at this...

Don't bother. I loaded it up and was underwhemed. Excel looks like more fun.

[Josquius]

What Ed said.
It is complicated for the sake of being complicated.

[grumbler]

What Ed said.
It is complicated for the sake of being complicated.

Not "for the sake of being complicated," of course, but because simplicity isn't one of the designer's goals, and so he brute-forces most of his solutions.

It isn't to everyone's tastes, of course, and I use every simplifying option the game has and still see it as an order of magnitude more "fiddly' than it needs to be, but it has a number of interesting features to it.

I don't know how well the AIs will hold up when combat comes, but so far the AI seems to be doing what it is supposed to be doing.  Enemy empires seem to build ships, explore, and expand about as they should, with no visible cheats.

[grumbler]

Spent some more time with the game, and concluded that it is just too fiddly to be fun.  The author doesn't seem to realize that, for a game to be fun, the decisions must be interesting.  In Aurora, 99.8% of the decisions simply are not interesting.

Example:  I want to build some weapons to put on a ship.  I have to decide which kind of weapons I want to use:  laser, mass weapon, missile, etc.  That's an interesting decision.  Then I have to decide what kind of laser to build (i.e. the frequency i want it to use).  I don't really care.  Then I have to decide which scientist will research that tech.  I don't care.  Then, I have to decide whether to mount the weapon in a turret.  That's interesting. Then I have to decide which scientist will research the turret.  I don't care.  How fast the turret will tun?   I don't care. What kind of power cells will I  use?   I don't care.  Who will research those?   I don't care.  What kind of fire control will I use?   I don't care.  Who will research that?   I don't care. What kind of reactor will power those cells?   I don't care.  Who will research the reactor?  I don't care.  Who will research the resulting ship?   I don't care.

The decisions that matter and are interesting just get drowned in the decisions that any competent staff would take care of.

An interesting failure, but a failure nonetheless.

[Razgovory]

Actually, the designing weapons never really appealed to me much in those games.  I always felt that as Space King, my job was to decide who we should point our guns at.  Not the specifics of what the guns do.  The exceptions being super weapons.