OK, new Aurora player here.
I REALLY want to be able to play this game, but I'm stuck on a few things:
-How soon should I have a ship up and exploring?
Eventually. This game is different from other x4, where you're first few turns do not determine the end game.
-I think I've properly designed a ship, with working engines and all... but I can't figure out how to get the shipyard to start building them. Do I need to finalize a ship design somehow before it can be selected? I set the shipyard to build and then go to select a ship class from the drop down... but there's nothing. I don't get it. Ship designer says there's no errors or anything.
The ship yard need to be at a greater or equal tonnage to the ship, then it needs to be retooled for the ship. Military ships may only be built at naval yards (denoted with an N), and civvie at civvie yards (denoted with a C). The Civvie will randomly build your civvie design ships that is dependent on various unknown factors to me. You can also build civvie ships for your own personal use.
navalshipyards CAN build civvies, but they are much more expensive to retool and expand, so this is usually a waste of resources.
so: check SY size.
design ship within sizelimit. lock the design, if it has a big design flaw it will not lock.
retool the yard to the design.
build ship.
your first retool is free btw.
-If I designate a design as "commercial" (I just need to make the engine "commercial" to do that right?) then civilians will build them right?
-What's a good annual failure rate? 3%? 6%? 10% too much?
Well no, a civvie design contain no military parts. So if you give a ship civvie engines, but a military component it'll be consider a military ship.
there is a checkbox on the design page to hide all military parts.
-Why can I manufacture some (and only some) ship components on the industry page separate from the shipyard page? These for PDCs, or do I need the parts sitting around before I can build it in a shipyard?
The shipyard will supply all the needed components. I dont know why you can construct ship components.
When needed components are available when the buildorder is laid down, the parts are used to decrease the time needed to construct the vessel.
-Something about shooting supplies between planets with a giant gauss cannon? This is good for getting minerals back to your manufacturing centers right?
The mass drivers are only good for mineral shipment within the same system. There are various uses for them. I tend to make a depot and have mass driver shoot mineral to it from across the system or to provide a colony with all eleven minerals.
-I'm guessing every nook and cranny of weapon research is useful? Or can I play this like GalCiv2 where I can get away with focusing on one branch of weapons?
Every weapon is indeed useful, Microwave, Meson, Gauss, and Rail gun have terrible range. Laser have not as terrible range. Missiles have nigh infinite range.
Microwave weaponry will disable ships. Blind sensors and what not. Meson attack internal component directly, and ignore shields and armor. The player base seems to favor this for anti missile turret work. I don't really know the difference between gauss and rail guns they get used as a last tier or second to last tier missile defense.
Its up to play style really and role playing in the universe. I plan to build fast light laser ships with anti missile escorts.
gauss can be mounted in turrets and are used in CIWS, Rails can fire further IIRC and do more damage.
-Planetary bombardment?
-Interplanetary bombardment?
Its fun, but can make planet uninhabitable and unfixable with terraforming. You can bombard planets with mineral packets if you don't have a mass driver receiving the goods. And possible you may be able to push asteroids into planets.
-Why would I ever want to do a ground invasion when I can just bombard them into submission?
Because if you glass a planet into a nuclear inferno no one can use it, including you.
-Is it more efficient to focus industry and research power housing one project at a time or spreading it all out? I'm used to Civilization based games with one research project and major industry project per-planet at a time.
Not really. Your home planet will be doing various research, building various ships, ground units and you can split your construction factory work force by percentage to work on various projects. As well as building missiles, and fighter in concert. You can specialized planets, which may may logistic easier.
-Is camping jump points with ships specialized for super-CIWs a good idea?
This is a play style question. If you like building them, then go for it. CIWs are ship only weapon defense. As in they will act as PD for only the ship or PDC they are placed on.
-Can I build immobile stations not in orbit of a planet? IE a gas station?
Sure, just don't put any engines on it, and get a tug to place it where ever. The cavate is that they'll need to be tugged back every half a decade for an overhaul.
Adding a maintenance bay, plenty of maintenance rooms and other selfrepair systems should increase longevity, but I don't think will remove the need for eventual overhauls. breakdowns will become more frequent when a ship gets older.
Maintenance modules require a population to function though, so a cloudcity remains pretty high maintenance.
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Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games (Read 2853898 times)