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[Unknown72]

So, this isn't actually my first time doing a Let's Play, but it has been close to 2 or 3 years since the last time i did one. Today, and hopefully for a while, i'm doing one for a free game called Aurora 4x, commonly referred to as Dwarf Fortress In Space. Aurora 4x has the bare minimum of graphics, as in, almost none at all, but as a result the depth of the game is ridiculous. I'm using a Packaged Installer, which means that it has a tiny bit more art then normal, but that's only in the case of Racial Pictures, Medals, Flags, and Planets (Only when viewing the system map.) You can be named as anything from a Planet, a Comet, an Entire System, A Ship Class, a Ship in general, A Fighter Pilot, A Star Drive engine, An Officer, A Scientist, A Governor of a Planet, ect... Feel free to make requests to be named as anything or to take a character for your own. We work in Council as well, meaning that instead of just having 1 Dwarf make all of the decisions for us, we all decide together what we should do.

So, in this Let's Play, we are all Dwarve's who've successfully purged all other races from our planet, and in the resulting peace we have worked together to discover a new magic called "Science". As a result we have spent a few years studying this "Science" and have been told that we are very close to discovering new materials. This is the basic set up for us so far.



So, if you've already played Aurora, then you know what most of this is, but if you don't well i'll explain it to you. Now, the Starting Year is purely cosmetic, it's just used to help track your game time wise. Difficulty modifier pretty much explains itself, 100% is normal difficulty, 90% is easier, 110% is hard, ect, i have it set to 90, so it'll be easier for me since i'm still learning this game, but not so easy that it's holding my hand. Now, the Race Generation Chance is the chance that an NPR (Non-Player Race) and the Player have to create a new race upon entering a new system. This game doesn't generate the systems at the start, it generates them when you discover Jump Points to a system. The Maximum Number of Systems is how many systems are going to be able to be generated, i have it set to 150 because this game Simulates everything, so a system could have hundreds of comets and asteroids that it'd need to be able to keep track of.

Below that is our Empire setup, we're the Dwarven Conglomerate, Short name is Dwarves, Species is Dwarf, with our homeworld name being Urist (Feel free to suggest a more Dwarven name for our home.) Our government is an Absolute Democracy, meaning the people decide what happens via vote, and the Empire Theme and Commander theme are just the themes that people, systems, ship classes, ect.'s names are going to be themed around when first generated. Species Tolerance is how much your species can handle in deviations, the only ones i changed are Max Atmospheric Pressure and Max Deviation in Temperature, the temperature deviation is normally 26, and the atmosphere pressure is normally 4, but as the Tough as Nails Dwarves that we are, i've upped them slightly.

The Starting Population has obvious stuff in it, our starting population is 500,000,000, we have 1 shipyard at the start that our Dwarves managed to make using their new magic of "Science", and we have a measly 5 research facilities for our Magic Science Dwarves. Under the Starting Race section to the top right, it will generate the Sol System, as i do not have enough practice with Space Master, which is basically GM mode that lets you edit everything, so it will replace Earths name with Urist, and the rest of the planets, comets, and asteroids will have the normal names in Sol, like Mars, Venus, and Mercury.

In the Non-Player Races section i have turned off a starting Computer controlled Race, as these races when enabled start far more advanced then we do, and most of the time are completely hostile. But not to worry, that doesnt mean NO races will be generated, it just means none will be able to find us right from the beginning and kill us before we can even start, we still have a Race Generation Chance of 30% for each system we discover. Now, in the Computer Opponents tab i only have the Precursors turned on, which means we will have opposition no matter what at some point.  In the Commanders section i have Realistic Promotions and Political Promotions turned on, this means that someone can be promoted via Accolades or via Political Connections. I also have Inexperienced Fleets turned on, which means new military ships and the pilots of said ships will need to be trained, otherwise we will have a really crappy SpaceNavy. I also have Orbital Motion for Asteroids turned off as well, as that takes a ton of processing power by itself.

Here's a simplified View of all of this as well.




Now my fellow Dwarves, lets go ahead and Strike the Sky (if that even works... WHO CARES LETS TRY MINING THE SKY!)

[Silverthrone]

As a tribute to bless this LP, I bring some fluff! Seems to be in the right spirit.


A quiet afternoon in the main lecture hall of the Leverbread Institute of Technology.

The old professor, looking like a tuft of white grass wrapped up in tweed, stepped back from the board and put the now rather reduced bit of chalk on the desk.
..."And, ladies and gentlemen, the conclusion. And all the possibilities thereof.”
The hall was silent, and was barely half-full. No matter. People would be listening across the whole world soon enough.
“As you can see, the final union between the sciences of magic and technology has lead to many great advances, particularly in the field of mining. Through the tireless work of Professor McShovlington, new minerals not before seen or recorded by Dwarven kin has been discovered, hidden away deep in the molten crust of our world. His extraordinary machines means that we can now hope to extract and exploit them reliably.”

A few yawns. Some of the more economically inclined students were taking note.

“It is, however, more than merely new metals to play with. They are much more. As I trust you know, recent developments in demonology supports that there are indeed numerous, perhaps numberless, universes different to our own, with widely different physical laws. Some of which are closer to our own than others. And, as Professor McKetterlode's famous experiment with Ruinous Dust has proven, there are remains of these alien realities present in ours. Either as ancient deposits from Creation itself, or through ancient traffic with demons.
According to my calculations, these minerals remains entangled, intimately entwined, with another universe; partly part of our reality and partly of the Other Reality. Perhaps remains of a painful separation at birth between our realities at some point during Creation. We do not yet know. Now, distant spectro-arcanological analysis suggests that the fabric of this Other Reality behaves very closely to our understanding of liquid. Such, these new minerals are inclined to act, at least partly, as if our own reality was the same.”

The scratching sound of furious note-taking rose up. More and more heads rose up from the benches.

“As you thus will understand, these minerals are far from ordinary. It appears that, with the right treatment and the right incantations, these strange minerals are not bound by the natural laws of our world, discovered and so cleverly recorded one century ago by the honourable Sir McNewton. They could be, as it were, Trans-Newtonian. And I needn't tell you how many possibilities such a set of wonder materials create. Engines and machines not necessarily bound by friction, by the laws of thermal dynamics, of McEinstone's famous relativity theorem..! A whole new set of boundries, if any, to discover, and all the wonders that can be achieved thereof! New, unprecedented energy sources. Reliable, economic deep core mining. Efficent void travel! Anything could be possible!”

The hall was well awake now. A few mouths hung wide open. The economical students were rocking in their seats, aching to get in touch with investors.

“Ladies and gentlemen. We stand on the brink of a new era. A Trans-Newtonian era. All that remains... Is to take the plunge.”

[Unknown72]

That is some great fluff right there. I'll have the next update posted soon as well, so fellow dwarves can start staking claims! Feel free to suggest different names for the different planets in our Solar System too!

[Unknown72]

So just a quick thing, I was not able to upload a racial picture for Dwarves, as Windows 10 Does not really agree with the VisualBasic programming of this game, so for now until i can find a workaround, that picture space will be blank, don't want to spend to much time on it.

On an RP note, Urist McNiceFace refused to properly take a picture to represent the whole of Dwarven-kin, and thusly has been fired as a model, oh well, here's hoping we eventually find a good one!

This is our Race Profile, it provides the basic details and overview of our glorious Dwarven Kind



Now, Onto specifics.

This is our Solar System so far. The names for planets and comets and the like are purely placeholder until we can get Urist McGoodNamer sober and cognitive, which i fear might not be for a while.



We are really zoomed out, and it's cluttered with lots of asteroids, so i'm going to zoom in so we can see our wonderful Urist homeplanet and change settings so that we only see specific Asteroids.



So far none of this matters to us yet. The white circle around Urist means that we've surveyed it for special minerals, of which we will found out about soon. The Green circle means that there ARE minerals on Urist. The circles with light blue are Comets, and the lines behind them are they're current trajectories, so from that we can see that Encke and Comas Sola are coming in, with Wild coming in much later (top right). Now, onto Urist itself.



Now this is Urist. We can see the specifics of our planet here. Most of this is obvious in what it does. Now, on the right side you will see something called Conventional Industry, this is basic industry in all Production aspects, what we want to do is convert it into focused industry like Mining and Construction. Right now, we have no research going, nor do we have proper mining done, but we do have good resources, not a lot, but we have great access to them!



From this you can see all of the Trans-Newtonian resources our planet has. We have a pretty Decent start. We have decent accessibility to each of these resources, of which your Home Planet always has access to all 11 of them. Accessibility decides how much of that resource your getting per month per year. So having a planet with millions of tons of resources but only 0.1 accessibility is a terrible planet to do mining on, but having them in the tens of thousands or more with at least 0.7 Accessibility is great for mining! The ones we want to mostly pay attention to are Duranium and Sorium. Duranium allows us to build buildings and ships, while Sorium is purely used for Fuel. Right now we have a decent amount of both.

Currently however, we have a few steps we must do. First, we must appoint Officers and Civilian Administrators. These Officers and Civilian Administrators all have passive bonuses that can only help us. Currently, we just need a Governor of Urist, as i have an option picked to automatically assign rules to non important positions. Bear in mind that we also have a Fleet Headquarters with different leadership positions in them as well, but currently have no officers of high enough rank to be appointed.

Then we have to decide what we want to focus on most for Urist, Construction or Mining. Personally i say that we deligate 650 of our Conventional Industry to Construction, and the last 350 to Mining. We can build on this, and it will take time to convert it all, but it will take less and less the more Construction facilities we have.

(I will be listing what positions are open and can be named whenever asked, and at the end of this post. Each in-game character has their own Traits and skills, so if asked i will provide those to those who want to know)

I will have a Professor McShovlington begin research onto Trans-Newtonian Tech, granting him permission to use all 5 of our research labs, which will in turn discover new technology for us to research that will allow us to utilize these new Trans-Newtonian resources. However, it will not be proficient and will quite possibly take a few years for him to finish said research until we find somedwarf that is more studious in the field of Construction and Production. There are 8 Fields of science, Construction/Production, Biology/Genetics, Defensive Systems, Energy Weapons, Logistics/Ground Combat, Missiles/Kinetic Weapons, Power and Propulsion, and finally Sensors and Fire Control.

The earliest that Professor McShovlington will finish this new wonderful field of Magic Science seems to be the 6th of May, 254. Now, this game is turn based, the most a turn can progress is 30 Days and the least is 5 seconds, so using this we can reach that date easily if we wanted to. AKA we can use time magic to speed it up so that we reach that time.

So for now we must decide on how much we should convert our Conventional Industry, which i again propose to be 650 Construction and 350 Mining, and who the Governor of Urist should be, alongside possible renames for the other planets in our solar system.

The current available people to be taken over and renamed are thus.

4 Civilian Administrators (The people who can become Governors)
3 Logistics/Ground Combat Science Magic Practitioners
1 Energy Weapons Science Magic Practitioner
1 Sensors and Fire Control Science Magic Practitioner
1 Missiles/Kinetic Weapons Science Magic Practitioner
and a numerous amounts of low ranking officers. (promotions are a thing via Accolades and Political Connections, keep that in mind.)

McShovlington is a 4th Logistics/Ground Combat Science Magic Practitioner by the way. I might Dwarf myself as the Governor of Earth if no-one wants it as well.

[Silverthrone]

As Urist McNiceFace defaulted, the Syruppaints Art Academy was hired to create a representative picture of Dwarvenkind to mount on outgoing probes.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The results, after some eight crates of wine, was predictable.

I'll see if I can't knock together a little pick & mix list of vaguely d0rfy names for planets and whatnot. Here's some suggestions to get started.

Ferran
Argantur
Aurog
Kopir
Braans
Adamans
Samaragd
Rubiin
Faridar
Kohr-i-Morn

Wendir's Folly (so named after an ancient Elven warlord during the Iron Wars, who apparently foresaw victory in the stars before being promptly crushed)
Eye of Armok
Carcass (The supposed corpse of a slain cosmic beast in d0rf mythology)
Hope (Patron star of ancient d0rf kings)
Star Toad (visiting meteor, often seen as a good portent)
Anvil

[Unknown72]

In an astounding landslide of Votes, planet's names have been changed, alongside the Star of our system being renamed the Eye of Armok (praise be unto him) alongside other name changes. Here's a compiled list, thanks to Desk Jockey Urist McListsaLot.

Mercury - Ferran
Venus - Carcass
Mars - Hope
Luna (Urists Moon) - Anvil
Jupiter - Argantur
Saturn - Faridar
Uranus - Rubiin
Neptune - Samaragd
Pluto - Adamans
Phobos (1/2 of Hope's Moons) - Braans
Deimos (2/2 of Hope's Moons) - Kohr-i-Morn


Due to the discovery of heavenly bodies in our solar system, there are also plans to name the first Comet or Asteroid that we successfully colonize for mining operations, the Star Toad, for good luck, and to have the name travel with the most Fulfilling Comets and Asteroids.

[Iituem]

Ooh, could I have a civilian administrator named Olon Gearabbeys?  Also, 650/350 Construction/Mining sounds good.

[Unknown72]

Ooh, could I have a civilian administrator named Olon Gearabbeys?  Also, 650/350 Construction/Mining sounds good.

I sure can, would you like to be the Governor of Urist as a result, or just a Civilian Administer until you find a place you deem worthy as being governed?

[Iituem]

Sure, why not governor?  "When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice!"

[Unknown72]

Wonderful, i'll be sure to make the changes when i get home.

[Silverthrone]

Oh, dear, I barely remember making that list at all, I was really tired. Glad it came in handy!

I think I was going for minerals and gemstones, sufficiently d0rf'd up. For interest:

Ferran - Iron
Argantur - Gold Silver
Faridar - Peridot
Rubiin - Ruby
Samaragd - Emerald
Adamans - Diamond
Braans - Bronze
Kohr-i-Morn - The Koh-i-Noor diamond.

All hail Lord Governor Olon Gearabbeys of Urist! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzaah!!

[Unknown72]

Huzzah! May he represent the Dwarfs of Earth faithfully!

[Iituem]

Olon's first mandate is:  Booze, you fools!  Dwarf populations are burgeoning, and for the first time in the history of the Mountainhomes we have more than 200 dwarves in a single outpost!  As Governor of Urist, I hereby mandate that we make sure there's enough booze and other forms of entertainment for everyone on Urist, and maybe dwarves off Urist too!

(I have no idea how you would implement that, if at all, in-game.)

[Unknown72]

Best thing i can think of doing is making a PDC booze bar, as trade and miscellaneous production is handled by NPC corporations.

But hey, that just earned every dwarf in existenses respect for you! Now you have a startling 99.9999% approval rating, that 0.0001% being a dead dwarf that died before he could give the approval, foul play is suspected.

[Silverthrone]

Yes, it'll handle itself through the civilian economy. Settlements will produce stuff they need, and later want, and civilian (NPC) shipping lines will haul them around, generating trade income and wealth. Your main influence of it all is through taxation or subsidising. Since we're being greedy little beasts, I imagine the d0rf government will be quite free market friendly.

Urist should be producing wine (colonies do, once they hit a population of 20 million), and in larger amounts as the population increases. It is a good thing that our good Governor focus on the necessary victuals in life, no one should shoot for the stars while sober.