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[gamefreak1]

You both sound like your being attacked by the swarm.

[umiman]

It's like you guys don't read the posts here save your own. This makes this the... what? 7th OMGWTFSWARM post including mine.

[Zangi]

@Journier, what resolution is your active sensor?  And you are saying your thermal sensor and EM sensor are not working?

@Greenbane, its possible that you were never detected by the NPR.... in any shape or form.  Ground troops probably can't detect spaceships. 
As for ground combat...  well there is probably nothing implemented to distinguish human troops and random alien troops....  and no way to phone home? 
It can be explained rationally. 
Ships, PDCs and the deep space scanner can be said to have built in comms/relays to send information from massive distances.... while ground troops don't carry around something powerful enough to even reach more then 1,000km distance...

[Journier]

@Journier, what resolution is your active sensor?  And you are saying your thermal sensor and EM sensor are not working?

@Greenbane, its possible that you were never detected by the NPR.... in any shape or form.  Ground troops probably can't detect spaceships. 
As for ground combat...  well there is probably nothing implemented to distinguish human troops and random alien troops....  and no way to phone home? 
It can be explained rationally. 
Ships, PDCs and the deep space scanner can be said to have built in comms/relays to send information from massive distances.... while ground troops don't carry around something powerful enough to even reach more then 1,000km distance...

my resolution for active is for 1000 tons of ship, it was possibly at the 3rd or 4th tech level for sensitivity.


My EM is not detecting their ships, and my Thermal is not detecting their ships... and they are in firing distance, which is insane.

That fleet, IS GONE.

all my heavy ships got battered into oblivion and had no way of stopping the attackers since none of my sensors could even see the damn things.

[Zangi]

Well, even if you have Thermal and EM sight on them, you can't aim and shoot at them. 

Need an AS that sees them for that....  Odd though, you should have been able to see them since they are up in your face... and your AS was on right? 
You have/had resolution 0 AS?  Should be a default for missile detection... Those would have detected the enemy for sure.

Were you checking the combat screen? or the system map?
Combat screen, you have to click on a different ship for list of targets to update.

Sometimes, the system map doesn't show any hostile ships and needs to be restarted.  At least thats what I found during my last encounter...  Aurora autosaves, so no harm in that.

[Earthquake Damage]

I really want to like this game.  It has a lot of apparent depth.  But the interface is terrible.

Spoiler: Mindless ranting... (click to show/hide)

As far as I can tell, some things require navigating a labyrinth of screens to do (e.g. trying to figure out how to design fighters -- I tried, but they aren't available for construction as anything but ships) and/or are very tedious (e.g. building a large ground army and organizing it into divisions/brigades).  I'm having a lot of trouble trying to figure out task groups, and I'm not even sure I can get them to do what I want without lots of babysitting (e.g. have asteroid miners go around mining asteroids without my input -- I think civilian ships can do that for me, so I've tried giving large subsidies to my shipping line).

There are also a lot of things that could afford to be automated or at least partially automated.  I'm horrible at ship design.  I keep making oversized, slow-moving monstrosities (may be a result of researching oversized engines and such?) compared to some of the player designs I've seen floating around.  When you start a new game and/or empire, you can say "use some of my research points to create ship designs" and the game will design some ships/parts for you.  It'd be nice if we could continue to use that ability by clicking a "randomize this design" button (bonus points if it fits a hull type of our choosing, like Freighter or whatever).  Then we can find something that looks good and tweak it as needed without having to design it from scratch (i.e. it'd be an effective guide for those of us who are clueless).  The same random design feature could apply to ship parts, missiles, and so forth.

As for the army organization I mentioned, it'd suffice to be able to select multiple battalions and click a button that organizes them into brigades automagically as best it can.  Want a garrison brigade?  Just select some garrison, brigade, and division units then click the button.

Stuff like the latter that could really help take some of the tedium out of the game.  Stuff like the former would be not only convenient but would make the game a bit more newbie-friendly.  A more thorough wiki would also help with that last point. 

Another thought:  Flag certain features of an empire for pure AI control, as though it were an NPR.  Don't want to bother with research right now?  Let the AI handle it.  Similarly, the AI could handle military organization and/or maneuvering with just a few macro-level controls for things like "do/don't explore new systems" and "feel free to attack this or that empire".  Or it could handle colonization or infrastructure/installations within any particular system.  Stuff like that.

Anyway, I really want to like Aurora.  It's just too unwieldy for me right now.  The interface is complex, the controls are numerous, and the game requires so much micromanagement that it is often tedious and managing even a small empire for a single "cycle" (not sure what else to call that 5-day increment) can take a lot of real time.

It probably wouldn't hurt to make some suggestions on the official forum, but I suspect my concerns have already been covered by other suggestions.

[Empty]

How is it complex?

Usually you only have to look at some screens only once when starting the game.

And while the game is running only at a few of them when something happens.

[Greenbane]

Designing components and ships is part of the game's charm.

But yeah, where the hell can I design fighters? Perhaps I haven't researched the necessary technologies, or else it'd appear in the standard ship design screen, along with normal vessels and PDCs.

[Zangi]

Designing components and ships is part of the game's charm.

But yeah, where the hell can I design fighters? Perhaps I haven't researched the necessary technologies, or else it'd appear in the standard ship design screen, along with normal vessels and PDCs.

You research specific Fighter engines for it in Engines and Propulsions.  After researching Fast Attack Craft Engine.  (No clue what goes before FAC Engine right now...)

The RP cost is 12,000.

[Greiger]

Also in order for the ship to be classified as a fighter you need to remove the bridge have a fighter engine on it, and the ship must be under 500 tons.

You can actually put any ship into a hangar that is big enough to fit it, but fighters have a couple handy streamlining systems for them, and use planetary fighter production instead of shipyards.

[Greenbane]

Thanks for the info, guys.

Another thing, though: do missiles generally move in stacks or separately? I need to get confirmation whether it's one or the other. Each of the fighters that swarmed the Magellan appeared to be separate entities, though that may've changed if I had managed to turn on the active sensors. My whole point-defense philosophy relies in small targets like fighters and missiles travelling in stacks. Can't send in the frigates (once I have a couple of jump tenders ready) if each enemy fighter is stand-alone, making it a targeting hell.

Also, somewhat unrelated, can fighters operate independently and transport teams and/or individual officers, as private shuttles or something?

EDIT: Apparently, missile salvos are a complicated matter, and it's hard to find consensus as to how they work, exactly. I gathered missiles form a salvo with their identical peers (same location, same speed, same direction) as long as they were fired in the same 5-second phase. No luck gathering information about fighter travel behaviours yet, though.

[Journier]

My new command and control ship which i designed with higher sensors detects the aliens now :/

Also I got to mess with ground combat a bit more and I used my Suicide class shuttles for the first time... after figuring out how to load infantry onto them then get them to go after a planet ^_^

I am going to make wiki page on Ground Combat and boarding.... probably..

[Greenbane]

There's a topic about that on the Aurora forums. In it, Steve explains most things about ground combat and boarding actions, as per recent changes. But he doesn't mention how stuff like engineer and replacement units work.

[Journier]

There's a topic about that on the Aurora forums. In it, Steve explains most things about ground combat and boarding actions, as per recent changes. But he doesn't mention how stuff like engineer and replacement units work.

know all about that, still noone explains the exact details on how to invade a planet, set up shuttles to carry drop troops to board a enemy ship...

The whole issue with Aurora is we have to wander blind and figure out the game when we are new and that loses like 95% of the players im sure.

All these operations in the game,  need explanation hopefully clear and concise for new players. Steve seems to give a brief and some detail as to the numbers behind it all but fuck if I know how to use it after i read his mechanics writeup.


Also... aurora website is down...

[muwahahaha]

As far as missile salvos go, from what I've seen they will only form salvos if they are the same type of missile and launched from the same ship. I've seen ships firing multiple types of missile into different salvos and groups of ships firing the same missile into multiple salvos (one from each ship).