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[Sirus]

Nope, just the same reduced height windows that have been there for a while. I think it's basically impossible to make resizeable windows in VB6, so you'll have to wait 10 years for Aurora II.

Either that or get a desktop with a decently-sized monitor

[Flying Dice]

Nope, just the same reduced height windows that have been there for a while. I think it's basically impossible to make resizeable windows in VB6, so you'll have to wait 10 years for Aurora II.

Either that or get a desktop with a decently-sized monitor

I believe most of us who need the various aids are on laptops.

Looking forward to this update nearly as much as Aurora II. 

[Sirus]

Nope, just the same reduced height windows that have been there for a while. I think it's basically impossible to make resizeable windows in VB6, so you'll have to wait 10 years for Aurora II.

Either that or get a desktop with a decently-sized monitor

I believe most of us who need the various aids are on laptops.

Guilty.

[Llamainaspitfire]

Nope, just the same reduced height windows that have been there for a while. I think it's basically impossible to make resizeable windows in VB6, so you'll have to wait 10 years for Aurora II.

Either that or get a desktop with a decently-sized monitor

I believe most of us who need the various aids are on laptops.

What about those with a laptop hooked up to a big monitor?

[Flying Dice]

Nope, just the same reduced height windows that have been there for a while. I think it's basically impossible to make resizeable windows in VB6, so you'll have to wait 10 years for Aurora II.

Either that or get a desktop with a decently-sized monitor

I believe most of us who need the various aids are on laptops.

What about those with a laptop hooked up to a big monitor?

That seems like a rather pointless waste of desk space. If you're going to go to the effort of getting a widescreen monitor, might as well get a proper gaming rig to go with it. But again, some/most of us are starving uni students, so the mobility and (relatively) lower price of a mid-range laptop versus a good gaming desktop is the main (heh) selling point. No point buying a desktop unless you can pay for quality, and it isn't exactly portable.

[PTTG??]

Multi-engine fighters makes me really happy. I've always found it annoying that you have to choose between payload and speed, when every other ship is a payload/speed/cost, pick two deal. Elite heavy fighters!

Shame it'll be a while, since I really want to try it out now... but that's okay. Between this and a colonizable moon, 5.7 removes my two biggest disappointments in Aurora.

Fighters seem to devolve into nothing more than manned MIRVs to me; the only weapons that have a sufficiently high mass-to-damage ratio are missiles. If you try to put an energy weapon on one of those things, it's so slow it might as well be upgraded to a full-on naval vessel.

I guess the multi-engines may help. I know that in Newtonian it might be possible to use fighters as very stealthy railgun delivery systems.

[Kanil]

Multi-engine fighters makes me really happy. I've always found it annoying that you have to choose between payload and speed, when every other ship is a payload/speed/cost, pick two deal. Elite heavy fighters!

Shame it'll be a while, since I really want to try it out now... but that's okay. Between this and a colonizable moon, 5.7 removes my two biggest disappointments in Aurora.

On the plus side, yeah, you'll be able to overengine your fighters.

On the downside, I suspect it will be a lot less practical; one of the big strengths of fighters/FACs was that they could get a good speed for very low engine tonnage. Now they'll need to devote more engine tonnage to get the same speed.

At least the option exists, where previously it did not. Whether it is effective or not remains to be seen, but it is likely to allow a greater variety of fighters.

[Flying Dice]

To be fair, you could make Gauss fighters without making them too large. But as long as other EW/KW have the requirement for a seperate generator, they're going to be impractical for light fighters, though you can make do fairly well if you use decreased size/increased recharge time lasers. In either case, what I'd like to see would be offshoot lines of fighter EW/KW with intergrated power and lower bore size, so something like a 5cm railgun or laser that takes 75% the space of a 10cm railgun, with better techs increasing bore size and decreasing HS size, and so on, with the resultant techs and weapons being tagged as fighter/FAC only, so you could have a 20cm fighter laser with intergrated power that only takes 120% the space of an unpowered standard 10cm laser, etc. etc.

Obviously all numbers are filler.

[Girlinhat]

Sorry what?  Has there been a significant update that I missed?

Also I used fighters a lot for harassment purposes and laser deployment.  A reduced size laser mounted on a fighter can get some pretty large laser focus up to point blank range, pretty cheaply.  You can punch holes straight through enemy armor columns with minimal effort.  I usually mounted a few with microwaves as well, they make great hunter-killers.  Launch 2x laser fighters and 1x microwave fighters at an enemy ship, they can knock out the sensors and prevent retaliation while also bringing those lasers in close and getting maximum penetration.

The main thing that a lot of people don't realize about fighters, is that you can get to 0 range with acceptable losses.  0 range on a laser is a lot of power, and even gauss can do damage if mounted in large numbers.  Literally sandpaper off the enemy armor.

But laser fighters backed up by marines, easy captures.

[Flying Dice]

Steve has been posting a lot about 5.70 on the Aurora forums, and there are going to be a lot of major changes/improvements. Combine that with speculation about Aurora II and...

[Metalax]

Sorry what?  Has there been a significant update that I missed?

Not yet, but Steve has been posting over the past two weeks about various improvements that are being added to the next version 5.70 of aurora, including several parts from the work he has done on newtonian aurora.

Primary things are;

A revamp of the Sol system to correct a number of errors in body data that expanded to include the addition of the dwarf planets, trojan asteroids, which were also added into the standard system generation, and replacing the previously generated asteroid belts with asteroids taken from real data. Coupled with the default max gravity rage being increased to 90% this also leaves Luna, the Gallilean moons and Titan as colonisable by standard humans, though obviously requiring infrastructure/terraforming.

A new production overview screen, that shows all types of production with indicators for items that will finish in the next 6 months / 1 year. In SM mode it also allows you to see production of all player races in one place making multi faction games much easier to run.

New orders that allow the setting up of mineral/fuel/supply dumps and keeping them at desired levels by your freighters/ships.

New engine design system. There are no longer seperate fighter/gunboat/regular engines, instead you set the percentage difference up to 300% increase/decrease from the base power level when designing the engine. Engines are also now no longer of a fixed size but can be designed from 1-50 HS, larger engines have a fuel efficiency bonus. Commercial engines are now any enine of at least 25 HS and 50% or lower power.

Fuel usage has increased substantially, as previously only a trivial percentage of a ships tonnage needed to be given over to fuel tanks.

Crew requirements for fuel tanks have been removed and requirements for engines substantially reduced, other components may have their crew requirements looked at.

There will be new rules for crew fatigue from long tours/crowded living space and ship operation when crew levels are reduced by combat/boarding, though steve is still working on the specifics.

Also I used fighters a lot for harassment purposes and laser deployment.  A reduced size laser mounted on a fighter can get some pretty large laser focus up to point blank range, pretty cheaply.  You can punch holes straight through enemy armor columns with minimal effort.  I usually mounted a few with microwaves as well, they make great hunter-killers.  Launch 2x laser fighters and 1x microwave fighters at an enemy ship, they can knock out the sensors and prevent retaliation while also bringing those lasers in close and getting maximum penetration.

The main thing that a lot of people don't realize about fighters, is that you can get to 0 range with acceptable losses.  0 range on a laser is a lot of power, and even gauss can do damage if mounted in large numbers.  Literally sandpaper off the enemy armor.

But laser fighters backed up by marines, easy captures.

Indeed. At low tech levels missiles/gauss and possibly reduced size lasers are the only weapons you can mount while maintaining an acceptable speed, as you need higher tech to be able to reduce the size of your firecontrols/powerplants/armour to make space to fit other weapons.

Interestingly the new engine rules will make other weapons viable as you will now be able to mount more than one engine or an equivelent single larger engine on a fighter design.

edit: ninja'ed while I was typing all that 

[Dutchling]

Thx for the summary. I was wondering about this as well

[Girlinhat]

I looked over most of it all, very welcome changes!

Also worth mentioning: I designed a fighter with plasma carronades.  Because Dwarf.

[Metalax]

The new crew rules were posted by Steve today.

Essentially you now specify the intended deployment length for each design, with deployments beyond that time causing a morale penalty. Steve still hasn't elaborated on the precise effects of low morale, but has so far said that it will apply anytime a check that involves crew or fleet training occurs.

Shore leave at any colony with at least 10,000 colonists reduces the deployment clock by ten times the time spent on leave, so allowing ships to spend a five day increment on leave will reduce your deployment clock by almost two months. It also occurs concurently with overhauls/refueling/resupply.

Crew quarters now take up significantly more space, and the required space per crewman is now based on deployment length. For a one month deployment, one crewman takes one ton of space. For longer deployments the space increases as the cube root of the deployment time, eg for 12 months it is 2.289 tons and for 48 months it is 3.634 tons. If the deployment time is less than half a month the required number of crew is halved and if less than three days is reduced by two thirds.

One important change is that fighters/facs now need crew space on board the carrier while they are landed. Survivors picked up from escape pods also now need space, but can be housed in new small and tiny cryo pods. Overcrowding in addition to a morale penalty, causes additional checks each five days for maintainance faliures of the life support based on the level of overcrowding, which can eat through your maintainance supplies if left overcrowded too long.

If there is no life support, due to damage or maintainance faliure for five days, the crew will be forced to abandon ship. Abandonded ships will be able to be recovered though Steve has yet to decide on the precise mechanism for this.

Also worth mentioning: I designed a fighter with plasma carronades.  Because Dwarf.

Heh, yes these actually work quite well as disposable turrets that can be quickly built by fighter factories without tying up a shipyard. They work particularly well for jump point/wormhole defence where your carrier can dump them out into space as enemies arrive and then run for it.

[Flying Dice]

Looking very nice when combined with revisiting crew requirements. One thing I'm worried about is defence platforms used for something other than defending populated colonies, as without any sort of system of automation, this would basically prevent the use of OWPs for automine colonies, JP defense, and so on.