Aurora - the 4X dwarf fortress

[Destroid]

I wasn't bothered by the pace of the game - you can race time ahead quite quickly if you want to, the main issue is that performance gets so bad later on processing turns takes minutes, which is simply not acceptable.

 

[Raapys]

That's exactly the problem though. Well, that and the stupid interrupts. I've had auto-turns active, I always do, and still ended up pressing the '30 days' button for OVER 9000!!! real life hours( or was it 2 hours? Can't remember, was so bored) while not even managing one single hour in game time. I then had to abandon the game since the AI fighting didn't appear to go away anytime soon. That was an extreme case, sure, but personally I like to play my games, not outwait them.

Anyway, game has other faults as well, but the turn processing issue( both in terms of mid/late-game processing time and the interrupts) really kills it for me. Which is sad, because this is exactly the kind of detail level and number of possibilities I wish for when I grow bored of other 4x games. Great idea, variable execution, but unfortunately nigh unplayable.

 

[Destroid]

Designing ships/guns/missiles/fleets is my favourite part of Aurora, it would be very cool to have a game focused on that (retaining the level of detail, or raising it higher) and pitting them against one another (not like GSB, which was pretty bad).

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, the turn processing is a somewhat impossible bottleneck. Compacting the database helps a little, as does opening SM mode and checking if there's something you can fix. But eventually the galaxy will be big enough with too many ships flying around for any PC to handle all the checks.

 

[TripJack]

that sucks...

is the dev planning on doing a rewrite anytime soon? i can't believe he did all this in fucking basic

 

[Cassidy]

that sucks...

is the dev planning on doing a rewrite anytime soon? i can't believe he did all this in fucking basic

Aurora 2

Note though that the author of this game is literally an oldfag, so his project might take longer than his life expectancy.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Visual Basic, baby, Visual Basic!

And Aurora 2 isn't coming out any time soon, if ever. Newtonian Aurora is taking most of his free time, plus he only codes when he feels like it, since there isn't any donations or anything. Still, kudos for making this much at least.

 

[Cassidy]

1) Design an unmanned spaceship that is basically nothing but a big engine crammed with box launchers
2) Accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light towards the estimated position of an enemy planet
3) Alpha strike
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!

Of course most likely fuel limitations will make such concept not so simple as it sounds. I'm not sure if speed will play a role in the kinetic impact either. Purely kinetic projectiles at near c speeds will be scary if that is simulated more or less accuratedly:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunexotic.php#id--Relativistic_Weapons

Specially fun if enemies like to put their space forces in tight linear formations.

Also I strongly recommend to drastically reduce maximum number and odds of NPRs and systems when playing Aurora rather than use the default settings. It makes the game flow more bearable.

It's not like you'll get farther than 500 star systems in any reasonable timeframe. You might even get a lower number and not even notice it at all.

 

[Destroid]

If I was Garf I wouldn't play with NPRs/random aliesns at all and just edit in aliens when he wants them.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Cassidy fuel will indeed keep that impossible, at least until late-game tech. Fuel constraints will be much, much higher than in normal Aurora. Newtonian A will actually calculate the mass of ships per each 5-second phase so after you've burned enough fuel your ship will be lighter and thus require less fuel to accelerate/decelerate - same after unloading a volley of missiles and so on. It'll be insane.

Destroid That's what I'm doing with the Codex community game. I dread the moment when all 11 races have their civilian shipping lines up & running, since each race has to check the spotting of for each ship individually. Let's say there's 5 ships each, that's 55 ships that needs to be checked 11 times = that's 605 checks with purely infant civilian shipping lines. Imagine what it would be like bit later in the game when each race can have 3-5 shipping lines with 150-400 ships each?

 

[Topher]

I can't find any word on 5.70 over on the official forums, anyone here got an ETA on it or a link to information about it?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Steve said it should come out over the Easter weekend:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4766.msg48353.html#msg48353

ALSO, NEW GROUND UNIT!

The existing Engineer Regiment is now the Construction Brigade. Apart from the name change, everything is the same as before.

There is now a new Combat Engineer battalion, which has the same combat strength and cost as a Marine Battalion. Instead of the marine bonus for fighting on ships, it has double strength when attacking or defending a PDC.

ALSO ALSO, more changes to Sol system:

Today's Sol update includes an additional fifty moons, split between the following planets (new total in parantheses):

Jupiter: 7 (22)
Saturn: 15 (29)
Uranus: 16 (28)
Neptune: 5 (14)
Pluto: 2 (3)
Quaoar: 1 (1)
Orcus: 1 (1)
Haumea: 2 (2)
Eris: 1 (1)

I have replaced the random Sol comets with 25 real comets. The furthest point of their orbit from the Sun is correct for all the real comets but the current distance in that orbit will be randomised for each game. There are now 619 distinct system bodies in Sol, including planets, moons, asteroids and comets. All of these are real-life objects.


Trojan asteroids can now appear in systems other than Sol in the L4 and L5 points of gas giants and super-jovians. The chance of Trojans being generated and the number generated is based on the cube root of the associated planet's mass.

I've corrected the problem in system generation that can sometimes lead to missing numbers in the roman numerals assigned to planets. For example, in v5.60 you might see Sirius I, Sirius II and Sirius IV as the first three planets in a system. In v5.70, all the planet numbers should be consecutive.

I've changed the ordering of system bodies in the F9 window. Because of the proliferation of asteroids in systems, displaying them in a meaningful way in relation to planets is problematic. Therefore, all asteroids in a system will now appear in one group after all planets and moons. The asteroids will be in order of distance from the star. Comets will appear in one group after asteroids.

 

[Topher]

Wow, thanks GarfunkeL. Easter weekend is this weekend, I think, so fingers crossed.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Good news on the slow-down front, though this doesn't apply to all games as it only concerns one of the spoiler races:

Spoiler

It does sound like making Invader incursions more of a rare event would be a good idea. Therefore I have decreased the chance of a wormhole appearing and I have halved the chance of an incursion. I've also placed significant restrictions on the number of Invader survey ships. They will still explore a little but far less than at the moment. More along the lines of a normal NPR.

This is very good news as the Invaders are one of the biggest reasons for slow-downs because they explore like mad and with extremely advanced and fast ships, they are very efficient in doing it. Some guy ran two test games where Invaders had explored over a thousand systems while NPRs had explored around 100 and the player mere 23-42.

 

[Curufinwe]

Aurora always had the potential of surging to the pinnacle of 4x space games. Nothing comes even remotely close to its detail levels and sandbox attitude. And it's hardcore. Seriously hardcore.
Sadly, it's always been the antithesis of user-friendliness and the interface can get maddeningly confusing, giving a perpetual 'half-finished' feeling. Still, it's all good, can't whine at all, since the creator literally gave 4x gamers a present with it.

 

[GarfunkeL]

More changes for 5.70 - Geology team mechanics are overhauled:

The chance of completing a survey team check during one year will be simply based on a combination of planet size and team skill. The formula is (1000 / BodyRadius^(1/3)) * (TeamSkill / 100)

So a team with a skill of 100 surveying the Earth would have a 53.9% chance of completing the task each year
A team with a skill of 120 surveying the Moon would have a 99.8% chance of completeing the task each year
A team with a skill of 150 surveying an asteroid with a 50km radius would have a 407.2% chance of completing the task each year.

During each 5-day increment, the chance will be equal to: Yearly Chance * (Increment Length in Seconds / Seconds in a Year). So in a 5-day increment of 450,000 seconds, a 100% annual chance would be a 1.45% increment chance.

Whatever happens as a result of the successful check, including no new minerals, the survey is completed. The chance of the survey team making multiple discoveries over a long period is now replaced with a chance of multiple discoveries during the single check.

EDIT: I've also changed the experience mechanic for geo survey teams. They now have a chance of XP at any point while they are working rather than after a task is complete. This because of the widely varying length of the task for different size bodies.

 

[Topher]

I am so excited for this next update. It really doesn't help that I'm holding off on starting my new game until it's released. I've got to find something to play in meantime.

I'm glad that he's finally relaxing the gravity requirements for colonization, though users have been able to do that themselves for ages, but why did he ever take such a strict stance on it in the first place... I mean come on the moon wasn't suitable for colonization. The other three requirements, like atmospheric composition, act as detriments to infrastructure requirements but they can be overcome, adjusted or simply lived with but gravity is immutable. Why didn't it just affect costs the same way and raise infrastructure costs?

 

[GarfunkeL]

He wanted to stick with reality, I think. Orbital Habitats can be rotated to create artificial gravity but that won't work with planetary bodies. Of course, the TN-minerals and tech act as inertial dampeners at least as otherwise ship combat would be impossible, so not sure of the exact path of logic.

 

[GarfunkeL]

5.70 is delayed:

Yes, it is getting that way. What started off as mainly a solar system update I intended to handle over Easter is becoming a little larger

I'll be making some changes to crew quarters and adding something along the lines of morale or fatigue when ships are deployed longer than their accomodations warrant. I haven't pinned down the mechanics yet. I'll also be looking to add mechanics for undermanning and for a ship being abandoned if all the crew are killed (as suggested in the thread about "better wrecks").

Finally, I wouldn't mind adding civilian fuel harvesters, so civilians would establish harvesting outposts at likely gas giants and you can buy fuel from the civilian sector, or tax them for selling it. Maybe even tie that into the civilian harvesters supplying the fuel for the civilian freighters and colony ships.

Plus some stuff I am sure will occur to me while handling the above

, plus some testing.

It will depend on how much free time I have over the next few weeks, which includes moving house in about a month (although perhaps I could ask my wife to handle that without me

). So you probably have time for a v5.60 game that will last a few weeks. My estimates are historically not very accurate though which is why I tried to avoid making them

Steve

Damn. Oh well.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Still, there's going to be lot of changes - engines are getting a total rework:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4816.0.html

I've completely changed engine design for v5.70. This shares a lot in common with the Newtonian Aurora engine design, although without the real world physics. Different engine platforms no longer exist, so you will no longer research "FAC" and "fighter" engine types. Engines are classed as "Commercial" for maintenance purposes unless they trigger a "Military" flag - more on that later.

Engine Size: You can now select the size of engine from 1 HS to 50 HS. Larger engines are more fuel efficient so fuel consumption is reduced by 1% for every HS of engine. For example, a 10 HS engine reduces fuel consumption by 10% and a 25 HS engine reduces it by 25%. There is no longer any restriction on the number of engines so you can have twin engined fighters if you wish.

As fuel consumption is now higher than in the past, I have made a number of changes to systems related to fuel.

Gas giants have a 50% chance of Sorium compared to 20% in the past. The minimum accessibility for gas giant Sorium is 0.3.

Fuel Harvesters have been reduced in size and cost by 50%. Their crew requirement has been reduced by 80%

Three new Fuel Storage Systems have been added. They are shown below with the current 1 HS system for comparison. Fuel Storage systems no longer require any crew.

Fuel Storage (1HS): 50,000 litres, 10 BP
Fuel Storage - Large (5 HS), 250,000 litres, 30 BP
Fuel Storage - Very Large (20 HS): 1,000,000 litres, 70 BP
Fuel Storage - Ultra Large (100 HS): 5,000,000 litres, 200 BP

Steve

There's much more about engines under that link, I merely copy&pasted the most interesting bits.

 

[Destroid]

Good news that fighters and FACs will be more flexible in terms of speed, although I suppose we could now also build gigantic super fast low range ships, so fighters lose their monopoly on that.

 

[TripJack]

version 6.00 got released yesterday

download link and instructions here
thread with all the changes here

 

[Topher]

The new version seems fantastic but it's got a few bugs. I'm waiting to start a new game until my 'missiles' bug get's ironed out, which will hopefully be soon.

 

[Destroid]

If the performance improved?

 

[GarfunkeL]

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEET.

Not going to get anything done today, that's for sure. I'll test out the 6.00 a little to know it's quirks and maybe see if Steve puts out a bug-patch before starting to transfer the LP into it.