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[MarcAFK]

However you can choice which types of scientists you get from both methods, so it's a bit of a grab bag.

Small not insignificant typo, you can't choose which type of officers you get.
I find myself spawning a few extra officers at the start of the game just so i can fill all staff officer positions, as a side effect i usually get one or 2 extra scientists.
I'll also spawn a few if i dont get at least 1 good scientist at the start.

[Jacob/Lee]

Before you can stick the engine on your ships, you need to press the "design" button at the bottom of the industry/population/whatever screen and use the dropbox to find "engines." After you design one, you must research the engine design, THEN you can put it on.

Thanks. I was worried that I was getting behind in my exploration. Now I ought to be able to explore and set up mining posts/colonies.

Is it usual for the research to take so long, though?

Yes. Make sure you put more labs on more important things (like, say, a higher research rate ). Also, scientists who specialize in that field can become godlike if you work them hard enough.

how do you hire more scientists? i got stuck with three that had absolutely nothing to do with engines/power.

Build more military academies to increase the rate at which all officers (ground forces, naval, scientist, and civ administrator) spawn.

[USEC_OFFICER]

However you can choice which types of scientists you get from both methods, so it's a bit of a grab bag.

Small not insignificant typo, you can't choose which type of officers you get.
I find myself spawning a few extra officers at the start of the game just so i can fill all staff officer positions, as a side effect i usually get one or 2 extra scientists.
I'll also spawn a few if i dont get at least 1 good scientist at the start.

Whoops. Fixed.

I like building the extra military academies better than just spawning officers, because a lot of them get no assignments and just fall by the wayside. Plus I always turn the training number/whatever it's called up to the maximum, so I kinda need those schools anyways to keep my fleet manned.

[azurelao]

Many thanks for the info. Guess that's another thing to build while making factories and labs.

-EDIT-
OK, got my first ship up and running in my first year, an Essex-class GeoSurvey ships Sent it to the moon where it did....nothing. At all.

From what I gathered, you have to set the target body as a colony. Did that, or at least I think I did, and then told the ship to survey it.
Then I gave it advanced orders to search next planetary body. So it moved on, and Luna is still un-surveyed.

Any help?

[Flying Dice]

1. Task Groups window
2. Select the survey ship's TG
3. Special Orders/Organization tab
4. Default Orders (lower left corner): Primary: Survey Next Five System Bodies


Note that it takes time to complete a survey, so if you ordered the ship to survey it then moved it, it might not have completed the survey. Also note that some bodies may not have mineral deposits.

[azurelao]

1. Task Groups window
2. Select the survey ship's TG
3. Special Orders/Organization tab
4. Default Orders (lower left corner): Primary: Survey Next Five System Bodies


Note that it takes time to complete a survey, so if you ordered the ship to survey it then moved it, it might not have completed the survey. Also note that some bodies may not have mineral deposits.

Did that. Turns out the moon was empty, even to boosted sensors (researched higher geo sensors, so i hope they went in the ship) Also, tried building another survey ship but it wouldn't let me put it into the same group as the first one.

Anyways, found an amazingly accessible asteroid a few ten-thousand ton deposits on it, so going to try and mine that. Just need to find a way for cargo ships to not have such a high fail rate

[Paul]

The command line method isn't working. I'm getting-
The module "msstdfmt.dll" failed to load.
Make sure the binary is stored at the specified path or dependent .DLL files.

Access is denied.

I got the same thing on my Admin account.

Like nogoodgames said, you have to actually run cmd as administrator. Go into Windows/SysWOW64 and find cmd.exe, right click it, click run as administrator, then type in regsvr32 msstdfmt.dll

I was thinking the setup installed that dll. I'm on win 7 and haven't had the issue, I must have picked it up from another program install somewhere.

[Tarran]

I was thinking the setup installed that dll. I'm on win 7 and haven't had the issue, I must have picked it up from another program install somewhere.

...Speaking of program installs, I just realized, on the Aurora forums they said that an alternative to the MSSTDFMT.dll error is to install another program.

Everyone who's still having trouble: Try installing that program.

[MarcAFK]

1. Task Groups window
2. Select the survey ship's TG
3. Special Orders/Organization tab
4. Default Orders (lower left corner): Primary: Survey Next Five System Bodies


Note that it takes time to complete a survey, so if you ordered the ship to survey it then moved it, it might not have completed the survey. Also note that some bodies may not have mineral deposits.

Did that. Turns out the moon was empty, even to boosted sensors (researched higher geo sensors, so i hope they went in the ship) Also, tried building another survey ship but it wouldn't let me put it into the same group as the first one.

Anyways, found an amazingly accessible asteroid a few ten-thousand ton deposits on it, so going to try and mine that. Just need to find a way for cargo ships to not have such a high fail rate

A few points;
1) More advanced geo sensors will only increase the speed at which you survey the planet, not increase the chance of finding anything.
2) In order to use the advanced sensors you have to design a ship that use them, or refit your old ship to use the advanced ones instead of your old sensors.
3) You can't construct new ships into currently moving task groups (of which your survey ship is certainly doing). You should construct your ships into temporary task groups; ie "Shipyard taskgroup" then when finished construction move the ship into another taskgroup containing all the ships you want to move to the same place.
4) Completely commercial ships have exactly 0 failure rate. Your cargo ship will be completely commercial as long as it contains no weapons (except CIWS) No active sensors/fire control, No grav sensors, and a commercial engine.
In version 5 when you design engines there is a drop down menu to select between commercial and military. Commercial engines are larger and have less power, but use less fuel and have no failure rate.
In Version 6, any engine is commercial as long as it is at least size 25 and has at most -50% power modifier.

Also, commercial ships don't suffer from bad morale (they may still complain though), so theres no need to let them go home for shore leave.
EDIT: so erm, don't make any ships which require no crew, you'll get errors from the morale check.
"Due to the complete failure of the life support systems on board explorer 001, 0 crew members have died. The remaining 0 crew members are struggling to stay alive."

[Hanzoku]

One caveat on the sensors - sensors of physical size 1 are allowed, anything larger trips the military flag. It allows for small sensor suites for civilian ships for RP purposes, mostly.

[Metalax]

Also, commercial ships don't suffer from bad morale (they may still complain though), so theres no need to let them go home for shore leave.

Mostly true, except for geosurvey ships whose survey speed is effected by low morale.

[MarcAFK]

Yeah it was one of the changes made with the jump to 6.0. We covered it in this thread a week or so ago IIRC.

edit: Here's the mechanics post where Steve describes the changes.

The relevant parts

There is no longer a separate 'buoy' category but you can create the same effect by designing a missile with sensors and no engine. The necessary reactor space will be added automatically. Missile reactors have unlimited endurance so there will no longer be a need to replace buoys every few years. While unlimited endurance is unrealistic, modern naval reactors have a service life measured in decades so this is a compromise between realism and a desire to reduce micromanagement. I may add some form of failure during very long term deployment - a failing IFF system on a mine could be entertaining - but I haven't decided yet.

Missiles that have sensors will now remain on the map forever, with two exceptions:

a) If a missile has geo sensors and no other type of sensor, it will self-destruct when the geosurvey of its target planet is completed.
b) If a missile has a warhead, it will self-destruct when its fuel runs out.

Hmm...I'll have to test that because it's indicating an infinitesimally small number of geosurvey points generated.

Yeah, the probes will have small geo sensor strength so you need to use big probes, like this one I use for firing from the missile bases when coming out of a conventional start.

Code: [Select]

Size 16.6 Geosurvey Probe Mk I
Missile Size: 16.6 MSP  (0.83 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 100 km/s    Engine Endurance: 14,000.0 hours   Range: 5,040.0m km
Geo Sensor Strength: 0.1    Maximum points: 1400
Cost Per Missile: 2.5725
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1%   3k km/s 0%   5k km/s 0.2%   10k km/s 0.1%
Materials Required:    0.06x Boronide   2.5x Uridium   0.0125x Gallicite   Fuel x3500

Development Cost for Project: 257RP

Infinite duration sensor buoys??!!! Oh, my. Time to construct a GIUK-style sensor net so I can detect hostiles weeks out from reaching my colonies...

Or indeed a VDA(very dangerous array) of sensor equipped mines, that spit out their payload if an enemy contact approaches too close.

So i made a survey missile for the moon but screwed up the waypoint, i'm now stuck with 5 second turns for a missile that won't destruct. The counter on the missile is at 23 hours and is going down something like 8 minutes per minute. Fingers crossed it'll self destruct in 3 hourS?
Or is there some way of deleting the bastard i haven't thought of?

[Metalax]

Not entirely certain that it will selfterminate when it runs out of fuel if it has no warhead.

Combat overview window -> missiles in flight tab. You should be able to manually destroy the missile there.

[MarcAFK]

Thx for the heads up, i didn't notice the tab when i checked the combat overview window.
I left it running for 6 game hours of 5 second ticks untill the game froze up with an error about 'system resources exceeded', checked task manager and saw Aurora taking up 1.8 gb.
Well i'm still doing something wrong, It's still not starting the survey

[azurelao]

1. Task Groups window
2. Select the survey ship's TG
3. Special Orders/Organization tab
4. Default Orders (lower left corner): Primary: Survey Next Five System Bodies


Note that it takes time to complete a survey, so if you ordered the ship to survey it then moved it, it might not have completed the survey. Also note that some bodies may not have mineral deposits.

Did that. Turns out the moon was empty, even to boosted sensors (researched higher geo sensors, so i hope they went in the ship) Also, tried building another survey ship but it wouldn't let me put it into the same group as the first one.

Anyways, found an amazingly accessible asteroid a few ten-thousand ton deposits on it, so going to try and mine that. Just need to find a way for cargo ships to not have such a high fail rate

A few points;
1) More advanced geo sensors will only increase the speed at which you survey the planet, not increase the chance of finding anything.
2) In order to use the advanced sensors you have to design a ship that use them, or refit your old ship to use the advanced ones instead of your old sensors.
3) You can't construct new ships into currently moving task groups (of which your survey ship is certainly doing). You should construct your ships into temporary task groups; ie "Shipyard taskgroup" then when finished construction move the ship into another taskgroup containing all the ships you want to move to the same place.
4) Completely commercial ships have exactly 0 failure rate. Your cargo ship will be completely commercial as long as it contains no weapons (except CIWS) No active sensors/fire control, No grav sensors, and a commercial engine.
In version 5 when you design engines there is a drop down menu to select between commercial and military. Commercial engines are larger and have less power, but use less fuel and have no failure rate.
In Version 6, any engine is commercial as long as it is at least size 25 and has at most -50% power modifier.

Also, commercial ships don't suffer from bad morale (they may still complain though), so theres no need to let them go home for shore leave.
EDIT: so erm, don't make any ships which require no crew, you'll get errors from the morale check.
"Due to the complete failure of the life support systems on board explorer 001, 0 crew members have died. The remaining 0 crew members are struggling to stay alive."

Alright, I'll dock my survey ship back at home.
And yeah, trying to balance engine power and efficiency sucks.