Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LoSboccacc]

like, will it bleed your brain out one ear leaving the skull clear?

indeed.

[Flying Dice]

Aurora has a mind numbing UI with a thousand different buttons, 500 of which do nothing tactically useful but do some RP related function. It took me longer to learn this game than Dwarf Fortress, which is saying something.

I picked up DF after about half an hour with CapnDuck's tutorials. I would kill for a good "show you how to get started and do useful things" tutorial for Aurora.

The thing is, this isn't DF. I did the same; two readthroughs of the Complete Newb tutorial or something and I was playing normally. I'm still learning how to play Aurora. It isn't the sort of game where you can sit down for an hour or two with a guide and at the end you know how to do pretty much everything.

Are there any good video tutorials?

Aurora has enough visuals to have a "Tutorial" on a video?

Is there a difference between that and a screenshot tutorial?

Also while there are video tutorials... as for "good" I am going to go no from my experience.

To put it simply, there would be almost no difference between doing a video of someone playing Aurora and a video of someone entering data into a spreadsheet. The only way to really learn is to do it yourself. Although there are things that can help. I think I posted a few links a page or two ago.

A lets play is quite different than a tutorial . A tutorial for Aurora would be helpful. Everyone has to had some moment where they received help learning excel, and in this case, learning the relationships of the variables to each other. There is a great deal of explanation of the mechanics that happens in tutorials that just aren't in lets play.

But when the LPs are extensive ones written by the creator of the game, they tend to contain a lot of information, both in terms of mechanics, and in terms of overall strategy. And plenty of spoilers. This is especially important as the only tutorial (as I mentioned before) skips a lot of important stuff. I'd say that I'd lend a hand to making a new tutorial, but frankly if I'm too busy to keep writing my fanfic on a regular schedule, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that anything I worked on would get done. Though I'm still willing to contribute if someone who does have oodles of spare time has a question about something.

I guess what it comes down to is that Aurora is the sort of game where, if you aren't willing to figure things out yourself, or at least take an active stance on looking for information (as opposed to saying "gee, I wish there was a tutorial that covered every aspect of this game with a massive UI"), you probably won't have much fun playing it. On the matter of there not being a tutorial, well: Steve doesn't care if people play the game or not. He has no real reason to expand on it. The players by and large don't have a reason to write one either, except if they are getting tired of constantly answering questions (I'm not; asking questions is the best way to learn, and not infrequently I've found something new out myself while finding an answer for someone.).

Reading all ~8500 posts of this thread will probably clear up a few things too.

+1. Practically every question has come up at least four or five times, as well as a lot of talks about ship and missile design, etc. That, and wading through that many posts of uncontextualized technical information and numbers is good preparation for dealing with the UI. 

And for those who were just being lazy and not looking up tutorials, rather than complaining about them being sub-par:
Multipart, video.
Some of the more obscure topics.
Tutorial section of the Aurora boards;  Steve's tutorial, such that it is. Remember that it covers maybe half of what you need to know to run a game with moderate success. If you can't follow the numbers in order and want me to link to each one in turn, you need to find a different game. 

[Jacob/Lee]

I found an almost habitable world 5 jumps from Sol. All I need is .80 whateverthehellyoucallit (atm?) of oxygen and it'll be perfect.

[Zebulon]

The thing is, this isn't DF. I did the same; two readthroughs of the Complete Newb tutorial or something and I was playing normally. I'm still learning how to play Aurora. It isn't the sort of game where you can sit down for an hour or two with a guide and at the end you know how to do pretty much everything.

I'm not entirely sure that's true. The main problem is that for most intents and purposes there is no guide for Aurora.

I learned to play DF the same way I learned to play Aurora - trawling the Wiki and, when that failed, the forums. (Of course the Wiki failed me a lot more often with Aurora). As I said, that's sort of the problem - there is no well organized repository of 'how to play Aurora'. Since I've ascended the learning cliff, maybe I'm (almost certainly) underestimating what it was like at the bottom, but I think a good tutorial would really help some people.

Hands-on experience and taking an active stance towards things is definitely important, but I remember first encountering Aurora, having trouble getting the interface comfortable on my 1366x768 screen while working through the tutorial, and thinking that the whole thing was incredibly obtuse; why should I struggle with a game that may not even be much fun when I get the hang of it? After all, he can't be bothered to make it playable at a reasonably common resolution; who knows what other corners he's cut! (note: I am aware he has good reasons for this particular gripe. That doesn't make it not frustrating!)

My main point is that it seems a lot of folks seem to have stories about trying Aurora, getting fed up / confused / angry at / saddened by it,

If I recall correctly, the tutorial doesn't cover a lot of things - how to make missile ships, how to shuttle cargo, civilians, etc. around, how to assign a planetary governor or staff officers, etc. (I remember being nearly in tears because I didn't realize that you had to manually select 'Governor of Earth' to assign him - it was the only option on the menu, so I assumed hitting the 'Assign' button would work!) When I started DF, there was a bit on the wiki about starting your first fort - what to look for in a site, what skills you should give your dwarves, etc., and then a bit on stuff like setting up farms and mining and workshops and blah da blah.

Reading over the Aurora tutorial, it stops short - sort of like telling you to embark then slapping you on the ass and wishing you luck. Not to mention a lot of it seems to be information overload - "here's what every little thing in the Summary tab of the F2 window means, also here's how shipyards get blown up, etc. etc." And really, information overload is the problem to start with!

Really, something a bit more like a walkthrough of a typical first year or so would probably do wonders. Something along the lines of:

- How to generate the universe
- How to build spend your starting RP & build typical ship types
- How to get your industry building things
- How to assign your governors, staff officers, etc.
- How to set up your survey ships
- How to set up a colony on Mars
- Extrasolar Exploration & the Galaxy Map
- Basic Combat Tips / Operation

Really, a complete shakedown of the F2 (Economics) and F12 (Task Group) menus, preferably doled out in such a fashion that it's understandable and not "here's what each individual bit means, hope you have a superhuman information retention ability", should suffice.

Of course, this would re-covering some ground from the already extant tutorials, but honestly the more I look at those the less newbie friendly they look. I've actually been considering doing something like this - a reasonably experienced player starting a new game and detailing how and why they're doing what they're doing. Sort of like an AAR, without the fictionalization and with a greater focus on explaining the interface.

And speaking of AARs, people always suggest reading Steve's, but I feel that it's a bit of a waste for someone completely new to the game. It does help with understanding the basic game flow, but if you don't have your head grounded in the mechanics of the game, a lot of stuff kind of goes over your head. (For example, I read the Trans-Newtonian and Soviet vs. NATO campaigns before and while I was starting; they were entertaining, and I had a vague idea of what was going on with the ship designs, but I actually learned more from Kurt's Terran Empire campaign because I actually had a handle on what those bundles of code meant.)

Incidentally, I made a post the other day that went from being a few intended tips to being kind of an off-the-cuff-at-6-AM-after-not-being-able-to-sleep-due-to-illness tutorial that kinda-sorta goes about some of the things I mentioned.

I'm leery of actually committing to anything because my interest comes and goes in spurts, but if folks think my vague outline is a good idea, I could try to cobble something together.

[Flying Dice]

Like I said, there really isn't a complete guide out there for how to get started, and there are enough important mechanics that a 1-year or 5-year tutorial probably wouldn't cover them all in the course of a natural game. I was more getting at the point that since there isn't any sort of full tutorial, the only way to really learn is to do it yourself. Steve's tutorial is missing massive amounts of information, but it does take you through the basics of some of the game, and that (for me, at least) served as a jumping-off point (not the deep end)  that was enough for me to get a grasp on the stuff it doesn't explain.

So basically what I'm saying, and I mean this with no disrespect, is this. Unless and until someone makes a complete tutorial, a new player has two options:

Use the resources that are available in conjunction with your own brain to figure out the game as best you can. If you want to know how to do something, or if something is possible, and you can't figure it out on your own, come here and ask us. We're here because we love the game, and are happy to help new players get used to it. 

or

If you can't handle getting into the game without a complete tutorial, and don't want to have fun learning it the hard way, then wait until there is one.

The fact that something isn't easy to do doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Sometimes, there isn't an easy way to learn something. We all wish there was, but there isn't any point in wishing for something that in all likelyhood will never come about when you could be spending your time working at it the fun way. Few things are more satisfying than having your freshly designed ships roll out of the yards, clash with enemy ships, and get blown up because you forgot to add armor, or give them reactors, or see them fall apart on their own because they have a maint. life of 0.03 years, and then figure out what you screwed up and fix it. I may just be speaking for myself here, but when I figure something out on my own, it sticks a lot more than if I read it in a tutorial and promptly forgot it after I followed the step by step instructions and got to the next thing.

Hands-on experience and taking an active stance towards things is definitely important, but I remember first encountering Aurora, having trouble getting the interface comfortable on my 1366x768 screen while working through the tutorial, and thinking that the whole thing was incredibly obtuse; why should I struggle with a game that may not even be much fun when I get the hang of it? After all, he can't be bothered to make it playable at a reasonably common resolution; who knows what other corners he's cut! (note: I am aware he has good reasons for this particular gripe. That doesn't make it not frustrating!)

Heh. Completely agree with you on this. Playing on 1024x768 was hell until I found ReSizeEnable. I would almost like to say that dealing with annoyances like this is good, in that it weeds out people with a low tolerance for frustration or problem solving before they invest too much time in the game. Because seriously, if you're thrown off by the fact that the spreadsheet simulator you desperately want to play has a clunky UI and is incredibly complex, you'll probably have more fun with Sword of the Stars or GalCiv II. 

[MaximumZero]

Wow, Zebulon, that Q&A was really, really informative! I'd love to hear some more of your insights while I'm dying several interplanetary deaths.

[Areyar]

I'm just being lazy and giving up early on searching the Pentarch boards and wiki after only 5 hours... so,

when I add a second bridge (not a flagbridge) to my shipdesign,
does it function as a backup-bridge (eg has bridge an actual function, besides being mandatory)
or does it just double the chance of the bridge getting hit and thus officer-victims?

[Loud Whispers]

PTW, this looks UBERMAZING.

[Flying Dice]

I'm just being lazy and giving up early on searching the Pentarch boards and wiki after only 5 hours... so,

when I add a second bridge (not a flagbridge) to my shipdesign,
does it function as a backup-bridge (eg has bridge an actual function, besides being mandatory)
or does it just double the chance of the bridge getting hit and thus officer-victims?

AFAIK the only data about the bridge is that it is required for ships over 1000t. I have never seen a bridge damaged in battle, and I don't believe it can be.

[LostCosmonaut]

I believe it can be destroyed, and sometimes officers will be killed by "a direct hit to the bridge". Most unfortunate.

Also, does anybody know any way to have a missile change targets midflight?

[Osmosis Jones]

You need to put sensors on the things. I think a small passive thermal will do it, but I dunno, never tried it personally.

[Flying Dice]

The scourge of nepotism has raised its ugly head:

• Vice Admiral Oliver Collier
• Rear Admiral Ethan Collier
• Captain Bailey Collier

Also, one Captain Jamie Kirk.

[Jacob/Lee]

I believe it can be destroyed, and sometimes officers will be killed by "a direct hit to the bridge". Most unfortunate.

Also, does anybody know any way to have a missile change targets midflight?

You need to put any kind of sensor on it, thermals are usually one of the best for anything. Thermals pick up heat signatures (engines and populations), actives are like sonar (but you should know that already), and EM pick up things like shields. If the missile can get a lock, it will target whatever it finds.


Also, I'm scouting around new systems, holy christ it's a warzone. Every other system I pick up 6 or so wrecks, sadly some of them have the combatants still flying around... Most of which are hostile. One group destroyed half my salvage fleet, flew away then came back for another pass and destroyed the rest. I'm sending in the warships right now to lay them out.

[Flying Dice]

20 researchers and still no sensors specialist. I like to imagine that "retire" is in-universe slang for "public torture and execution" as I get rid of the 0%ers and surplus C&P folks. Also, best way to clear ruins quickly is with ten brigades of engineers and a brigade of HA troops to deal with robots.

[Jacob/Lee]

More engineer brigades increase your chance of exploiting the ruins, giving shitty returns.