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[Graknorke]

Nah, I wasn't trying to build up a war fleet or anything. I was literally just trying to research enough techs and parts that a decent sized cargo ship wouldn't fall apart within the month, while also going fast enough to be useful.
I really hate making things knowing they'll be redundant, unless I have a choice on it. Making a ship with 5 cargo bays (enough for 1 automine from what I've been told) and enough fuel would fall apart within only a couple of years, and giving it enough maintenance supplies etc would make it be too slow to get anywhere beyond Mars at its furthest point (opposite side of Sol) with its fuel, and when I eventually designed a reasonable balance it would just take too long for any trips to be reasonable.
So I sat down and started researching engines and industry. And more engines and industry. And then realised I had mined up most of the resources and quite a few had run out entirely.

[Flying Dice]

Cargo ships shouldn't be having maint breakdowns. Unless you're doing something silly like designing them with military drives.

[Graknorke]

Why is that so silly? I don't want civilian shipping companies buying up those, because I can tell they're going to keep on using them and being generally inefficient.
Plus military drives are faster and I'm impatient.

[Tarran]

They're silly because of maintenance breakdowns, as FD said. And they need roughly three times the crew for the same engine power. They also cost a lot more for the same engine power, making it take longer to build the ships too.

Also, military engines chew through fuel like nobody's business compared to commercial engines.

[Karlito]

Faster yes, but more much fuel inefficient and prone to breakdowns. You really want your cargo ships to use commercial drives since they'll spend most of their time flying by themselves or in small groups away from planets. Your military ships spend most of their time in orbit with maintenance facilities not accumulating any points, and will generally tanker and other support ships to get anywhere distant.

(and all the stuff the ninja said)

[Flying Dice]

Heck, I tend to use commercial drives on my FAC carriers to cut down on costs.

[Neonivek]

They're silly because of maintenance breakdowns, as FD said. And they need roughly three times the crew for the same engine power. They also cost a lot more for the same engine power, making it take longer to build the ships too.

Also, military engines chew through fuel like nobody's business compared to commercial engines.

It is one of the few times Aurora will outright break immersion and story for the sake of balance.

[Flying Dice]

Actually, the whole balance between commercial and military drives is a pretty central part of the Starfire lore; it was a minor plot point in one of Weber's novels about the bug war. That, and it makes sense. If you're running a drive at near-maximum performance all the time, it makes sense that it would have a much higher rate of part turnover and fuel consumption, in the same way that, say, a racecar is going to need more frequent checkups, refueling, and repair than a sedan that some random person owns.

[Carcanken]

Are there any tutorials for this game? It seems really good, but the learning curve seems even worse than DF.

[Tarran]

Possibly slightly outdated wiki tutorials for reading.
Video tutorials for watching that may or may not be outdated.
Same as above.

[darkrider2]

Are there any tutorials for this game? It seems really good, but the learning curve seems even worse than DF.

The problem is that there is no one qualified to actually make a tutorial about it. I mean every time you think you've discovered everything important to game play, you go down a dark dank corridor in the middle of the night and inside one of the abandoned space dumpsters you discover a new menu that does something for some or another reason.

Pretty much nobody knows all the ins and outs of this game, I'm skeptical as to whether or not Steve even knows all of the things hes put in there.

But a tutorial on the basics might be worthwhile. You can get some pretty decent free screen recorders that shouldn't have a problem doing it.

[Flying Dice]

Thankfully, once you have a handle on the macro level, you usually can pick up everything else from experimentation and fiddling around. I read through Steves' outdated tutorial a couple times and worked my way in from there, and I'm still finding out new things about the game  and the interface practically every session.

[Draxis]

This LP has posts scattered through it that are a pretty good introduction - listed on the third post, and there is an outdated tutorial on the forums, but it is probably best to just acquire the game and start playing around with it while you read them.  There are about to be some pretty major changes though, so soon all of them will be wrong.

[darkrider2]

Usually what I do is look through some menus and go, "what does this button do?". Then after being unable to determine it on my own I go perform a search on the aurora forums and go, "ahhhh, that's what that's for".

[Graknorke]

I dunno, I managed to get a good grip on the interface by reading the buttons and thinking about the context, though I did need the hint of "f3" at first.