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[lemon10]

So, I am thinking about giving this another try, after my previous try failed because I didn't know what to do/how to set it up/confused by all the menus
Any tips for just starting? Are there any good lets plays to watch (which I imagine would be a bit hard with a game of this nature) that might help?

[gimlet]

The tutorial on the wiki is a *reasonable* start, but only gets you so far - then you'll really REALLY want to read some posts about missile defense and missile design on the forums http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/

This lets play, still in progress, explains a lot of the menus in great detail http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474164&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
look in about the 4th post for the list of "Informational Updates" but he's nowhere near doing all of em

And to really get inspired to play, read Steve's (the game's author) Nato/Soviet Union Campaign http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,112.0.html
Every time I look at this it's hard to keep from firing up the damn game.

[Dutchling]

I never really understood how bean weapons can have a range though, if it is a perfect beam with no spread, shouldn't it be effective forever? Unless I forgot something about how light works (which wouldn't be surprising).
So pretty much, missiles are mad OP? Especially when we get Newtonian physics and their range will literally be infinite. I guess I'd best backpedal on my laser research then. Thankfully, I haven't started producing any ships with them on yet, so that's all good.

Beam weapons only last five seconds. That is why the max range is c * 5s. This sucks at high tech because the theoretical range for especially lasers is way higher than that.
The main disadvantage of missiles is the production and transportation of them. In a single battle missiles are almost always better then beam weapons but the longer a war drags on the better beam weapons are. Usually a war doesn't last very long though, as the AI tends to lag behind in tech pretty bad.

[Flying Dice]

As for the use of EW and kinetics in a PD role, lasers tend to be best for medium-range interception (i.e. the PD setting that gives them a range in which to act as PD), while Gauss cannon are better for the last-ditch PD setting. This is because of the way that combat operates; in order for a PD weapon in Area Defense mode to fire on an enemy missile, its range must be greater than the distance the missile can cover in 5 seconds, while last-stand PD automatically fires on missiles as they make their final approach.

[Chocolatemilkgod]

I tend to find beam weapons great as gate sitters, as they can just sit there and if an enemy fleet comes through, they're blinded for 30-60ish seconds, and you can destroy them at blackpoint range with beams. Beyond that though (well maybe for PD as well), missles generally all the way (just as long as you don't run out of ammo that is ). And beam weapons definitely have range limits, because, just like a flash light, the light will spread out (this happens in the beam weapons, just to a lesser extent over longer distances).

[nuker w]

So I decided to give this another go and once again face-planted into the cluster-fuck of a interface this thing has. Anyone got any half-decent advice on how to tackle it? Calling the tutorial lacking is a slight understatement.

[Karlito]

If you ask specific questions, we can give you answers. What exactly are you having trouble with?

[RedKing]

Just had the weirdest freakin' bug. Had two worlds in the same system, both had had TL1 ruined outposts on them, same long-vanished race. Finished competely reclaiming the first and had a decent little colony established there. Had an engineer brigade on the 2nd, with a troop carrier stationed overhead to pull them out if things got hairy.

Sure enough, things got hairy. Robot soldiers pour out, so I immediately land the troopship, load up the engineer brigade, and get the hell out. All good so far. I plan to come back several months later with a full combat brigade to take care of the robots.

So, I land the troopship on the colony world nearby and unload the engineers, then head for Earth to refuel and pick up the combat brigade.

After the next 5-day turn, I'm *still* getting combat reports. Somehow the property of the NPR robot soldiers attacking them carried over even though they changed planets. And the colony only had a garrison battalion for defense. I manage to get the ship back to Earth and load up the brigade, but the colony falls before I can return.

But the weirdness doesn't stop there. I had a slew of civilian freighters and colony ships inbound, delivering mines and miners. When they got there, suddenly there's a new race appearing with four non-hostile vessels orbiting the planet and a small planetary population. WTF? The civvie colony ship landed anyways and founded a new colony and then the others dumped their mines there. The combat brigade arrives and drops more soldiers than there are colonists at this point.

Dumbfounded, I turn on designer mode and SM mode to see what happened. The race isn't even visible in *designer* mode. 
I SM instant communication, and they identify themselves as Precursors. But the portrait and flag aren't remotely close to the "official" Precursors. And their base tolerances are matched perfectly to this planet. And those four ships? They turn out to be four of my civilian ships (must have been on the planet when it fell to the robots). These show up as part of the "official" Precursor fleet in SM mode.

I am sooooooo confused. It's like the game created a splinter Precursor "faction" race out of my conquered colony. Which would not have happened if I had just left my engineer brigade to be torn apart on the uncolonized archaeology dig.

[Metalax]

I know that there are some bizzare bugs related to robots from ruins, but that's one I've never heard of before. You should zip up a copy of the database and post it along with the description of what happened over on the bugs section of the aurora forums.

[RedKing]

I know that there are some bizzare bugs related to robots from ruins, but that's one I've never heard of before. You should zip up a copy of the database and post it along with the description of what happened over on the bugs section of the aurora forums.

Well...now that I've used designer mode it's kind of tainted. 
DB was showing some signs of corruption even before that (like all the pictures for planets in Sol reverting to blank blue spheres)

[Chocolatemilkgod]

I've never even found ancient ruins. Do you need some sort of active scanner or can geological ships find them? And yeah you got to love weird bugs that don't make sense XD

[Tarran]

A Geo scanner will find ruins if they exist. It's up to your luck if you'll ever get one generated.

[Metalax]

They are generally not all that uncommon, I tend to find at least one every 3-4 systems that contain a decent number of planets/moons. One thing to note is that they will never be randomly generated in the starting Sol system.

[Flying Dice]

Do note that you can add ruins to system bodies with SM mode, either for RP purposes or because you're a cheating bastard. I tend to drop a decent sized one on Mars, Venus, or Titan in my conventional starts to add a bit of flavor for my internal worldbuilding.

Generating systems for a custom race. Keep getting systems with 50 moons around gas giants, or broiler planets, or what-have-you. I get a decent system, but no! it has to be a nebula! This is quite aggravating.

Nebula systems actually make for very interesting scenarios, although they are rather difficult to start in. For one, they completely alter the combat dynamic. They're also even better than black holes as choke points.

[RedKing]

One interesting bit about starting in a nebula is that it will skew your ship design towards slower, more heavily armored designs. And thus skew research towards defensive tech. You wind up with big, heavy dreadnaughts and almost totally ditch FACs and fighters. It's kind of nice to have that constraint.