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[Journier]

While I have run into a bunch of such occasions, I haven't stumbled upon anything so severe as having to wade through 72 hours in 5-second steps. Very short combat skips are usually dealt with enabling auto-turns and hitting the 5-minute increment button. Things return to normal before long.

I did experience quite some time of 60-second skips, though, and that was immensely annoying. Definitely a bug, and eventually I had to use SM mode to teleport some warships into firing range so to eliminate the enemy contact which I had determined was the cause of the problem. I don't know if it was just that particular ship or its entire class (specimens of which I usually vaporize shortly after they jump in). The future will tell, but I've done my best to alert Steve of this glaring issue.

However, overall, forced interrupts haven't been a huge problem in the 45 years of my current game.

my game that is in the year 2075 now, i get very few interrupts.

I actually have gotten very few interrupts as well.

In 2075 i get an interrupt or 5 during a year but thats about it.

In my last game though, I was generating so many NPR's that when I explored the galaxy a little bit (8 systems).

I was suddenly hit by interrupts galore. They slowly subsided after 10 years of game time. (it was like 5 1 day interrupts, then id get a full month in).

Yea after 10 years i went in, found the NPR's and killed every one of them that had generated, and bam suddenly my game worked great.

NPR's are the scourge of this game, KILL EM ALL. 

[Greenbane]

By the way, does anyone know if the starting year choice affects starting tech? Or is it just a cosmetic detail?

[Journier]

By the way, does anyone know if the starting year choice affects starting tech? Or is it just a cosmetic detail?

pretty sure cosmetic.

[Zangi]

By the way, does anyone know if the starting year choice affects starting tech? Or is it just a cosmetic detail?

pretty sure cosmetic.

Its all based on your choice of Conventional or Neo...   and if Neo, how much research points you choose to start with.

I like to start at year 1.  Signifying the dawn of a new age.

[Grendus]

He needs better NPR handling and bug reports (Error 6203 tells me nothing, and probably doesn't tell him much either without a list of error messages), but other than that it's good. It's a different scale than DF, and desperately needs a better walkthrough, but the game itself is playable and enjoyable if you enjoy overly-complex 4x games.


I finally got some mines set up on the moon and a few asteroids. The civilian sector now has a freighter, which they aren't doing anything with even though I've set up supply and demand to ship around some automines. I really want them to handle it, there's an asteroid with so much material that having my small squadron of military freighters bring mines there would take centuries to get enough. Civilian class freighters are faster and carry more crap, and it's not like they have anything else to do since they haven't built civilian transport (I have enough infrastructure on Mars to support a million people or so, and terraforming is on the to-do list once they start hauling terraformers over there). Kind of frustrating, their only profit so far is government subsidies.

My geoscanners are happily scanning every planet, moon, and chunk of space dust in the galaxy. Io is tempting, lots of minerals though my current tech only actually uses one of them. Better is Asteroid #195, which has 6 different materials, three of which I can currently use, in earth-like quantities. But I need civilian transport up before I can get a reasonable number of mines there, then deliver a mass driver or two to get the material back to earth. A lot of the smaller asteroids I dropped one or two mines there. Figure I can come back in a decade or so, have my freighters pick up the minerals and contract a civilian shipping line to move the mine somewhere else.

A few more questions. If I design civilian class ships with terraforming or mining modules, will civilian lines build them and use them on planets with mining colony and terraforming designations respectively? Also, what's the prereq for developing more Ion Pulse Drive technology? I can't research any more engine technology short of hyperdrive, jump, or fighter engines.

[Greiger]

...

A few more questions. If I design civilian class ships with terraforming or mining modules, will civilian lines build them and use them on planets with mining colony and terraforming designations respectively? Also, what's the prereq for developing more Ion Pulse Drive technology? I can't research any more engine technology short of hyperdrive, jump, or fighter engines.

Civilians won't use terraforming or mining ships.  As far as I know they only make freighters, colony ships, and luxury liners.

The prereq for engines is the next level of reactor technology.  I don't recall what reactor it is to get past ion offhand but it should be the only reactor tech available.

[Greenbane]

The civilian companies awaken slowly, but within a few years you'll have an ever-growing fleet of civvie freighters, colony ships and luxury liners, if you've designed any (they're just for flavour, though). I don't think private companies build terraformers nor asteroid miners, though, even if they're classed as commercial vessels (which is the best option considering the sheer size of such ships).

As for advancing engine technology, you generally have to research a new power plant tech before its corresponding drive is unlocked (for research as well).

EDIT: Dammit, beaten to pretty much everything.

[Greiger]

Don't worry Greenbane, we still love you.  Even if you are slow.

[Another]

The difference between 49 minutes response and 50 minutes response with the same good quality info is not significant.

[Journier]

...

A few more questions. If I design civilian class ships with terraforming or mining modules, will civilian lines build them and use them on planets with mining colony and terraforming designations respectively? Also, what's the prereq for developing more Ion Pulse Drive technology? I can't research any more engine technology short of hyperdrive, jump, or fighter engines.

The engine techs come after the power plant techs. or the ..... basic powerplant/engine tech then splits off into engine tech and power plant tech...

yessirree.

[piecewise]

Ive been saying the same thing about dwarf fortress for years.... except instead of colorful dots, and icons, DF has colorful.... ASCII

OH MY GOD. Let the light be upon you.

First, there is a definite difference difference between Df's ascii and Aurora's dots. Both are rather low on the graphics hierarchy but shows forests, streams, mountains, people, animals, cages, stone walls, bridges and more all with just ascii. You have to learn what the symbols mean, yes, but at least they're there.

Aurora on the other hand is just a blue screen with dots of varying colors. Does it get the job done? Yeah, it does and in the end it's not the lack of graphics that bothers me; its the immersion they lack. Now let me explain before you take this way overboard again.

In DF when you set up a fortress you can watch the houses be built, see the migrants arrive, watch conflict happen. There is a direct visual connection between yourself and your actions, even if the visuals are pretty lame they are there. In Aurora when you colonize a planet you don't see the colony or the people represented in any visual way. What you get are numbers going up. There is no little city, no slow spread of civilization across the surface, the planet will always look the same no matter how many billions of people inhabit it. It lacks the immersion, the connectivity, the cognitive recognition of progress that DF does. Because, in the end, a late game Fortress will be a massive expanse of tunnels, chambers, walls, fortifications, dinning halls and rooms while a late game home planet in aurora looks the same as it did in the beginning, its only by reading through a few spread sheets that you know that it's changed.

And that right there is the problem for me, that I don't feel a sense of accomplishment from watching numbers on spread sheets grow. If the game showed me, even very primitively, my colonies and empire growing then I would be happy. Even if they just described it in text, even just one short paragraph, then I would be happy. But its not even that, it's just numbers; break downs of populations, numbers of resources and the like.

In the simplest possible terms:
In df when the game says I have x number of dwarves I can actually look down on them and say "Yeah, I do have x dwarves"
While in Aurora it just says that I have x number of colonists and thats the end of it.
For me, at least personally, it lacks a sort of connectivity. I don't feel like those colonists are really there. They're just a number on a spread sheet.

In Aurora one of the things that keeps me going is watching my little empire grow. Watching Mines expand, Population multiply, and Fleets increase.

There is a great feeling of feedback as all this happens but it still lets you imagine what it would look like.

Examples of this in Aurora....

My population expanding! My god we once only had 400 million on New Earth! Can you believe it?
And look at Mars! she is a burgeoning place of vacation.

Starting populations

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Current Population!

And they did this all on their own! I didnt have to carve out rooms, only Terraform new planets with likeable gravity.

It took 20+ years to get mars all set to be earth like.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Look at this burgeoning market of civilian activity. All Handled by them! I can choose not to carve out new "rooms" on planets that are already terraformed, or let the AI handle it for me (Carry Infrastructure with new population over to new planets automatically.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I better start digging deeper, Im outta resources nearly in my fortress's first few levels.... Oh I mean my first planets.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

See above

This is why the developer refuses to come on this board , because the parts of the DF community like you. I already read this entire thread and there were plenty of people just like you making these same comments 100+ pages back.

Seriously, give the game a chance if your gonna describe DF to Aurora like that. Either you didnt give it a chance or you just came to troll, if its the first, give it another try.

This is what I call the "Twilight fan's fallacy", this idea that I've somehow misinterpreted my own opinion; that the only two possible reasons I don't enjoy this game as much as I "should" is because I'm either a troll or I just never gave it a chance.

Pardon me but isn't is possible that I just didn't like it for perfectly rational personal reasons? There are plenty of highly developed sports sims and perfectly executed MMO's that I don't like simply because I don't enjoy sports and get no real feeling of accomplishment out of grinding. Does this mean that I am a troll or just never gave them a chance? No, I really don't think it does. Do I think this game is bad because I don't enjoy it? No, I think it's a great game and a real marvel of detail and simulation but It's just not a game I enjoyed because of a few design choices. Thats just how I personally feel about and I'm only posting this here because I was under the impression this was a thread to discuss the game. If this thread isn't for constructive criticism then It should probably be labeled as such.

Also that graph doesn't make sense. Gaming skill increases as you play it more? So playing this game will somehow raise my skill in halo, D&D and ace combat? 

[Journier]

Much better except your complaint about the picture.

[Micro102]

Ok this part of the flamewar topic has died so don't reignite it with a flamethrower.

[Journier]

Ok this part of the flamewar topic has died so don't reignite it with a flamethrower.

You are the only one even discussing it. Micro.

[Micro102]

Yeah, that's why you had the huge wall of text + self made graph