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[Azated]

Although the amount of civvie traffic generated from inter-empire trade is going to drag down the game speed considerably.

Game speed is part of the metagame now?

(It's seriously the only game I bothered to install on a ramdisk though)

Aurora and DF have that in common. Once you learn how to survive, your entire existence revolves around learning what to obliterate in order to improve those frames.

Out of curiosity, was there any sort of noticeable improvement on a ramdisk?

[Flying Dice]

Yep. Most of my campaign settings are optimized around making it last for as long as possible before reaching critical mass or encountering game-killing interrupts.

[varsovie]

Although the amount of civvie traffic generated from inter-empire trade is going to drag down the game speed considerably.

Game speed is part of the metagame now?

(It's seriously the only game I bothered to install on a ramdisk though)

Aurora and DF have that in common. Once you learn how to survive, your entire existence revolves around learning what to obliterate in order to improve those frames.

Out of curiosity, was there any sort of noticeable improvement on a ramdisk?

Yes, even with my SSD, because NTFS is a shitty file system. There's no practical way to measure the improvement because when you load a turn of significance (eg one that take more than a minute) to measure the time saved, you'd have to run it multiple time since the time per turn changes randomly, sometime by a lot. I'd say IOs are the real bottleneck in this game, seems everything is written/read in the database.

Of course good CPU mono-thread performance helps tremendously too, more than ramdisk when it's fleet detection lag IMHO. Even a slight overclock helps tremendously.
As for the few "options" the game gives to speed-up, like no orbit on asteroids, well it's a very small and linear improvement. Unless you have a very-old or notebook CPU I would not bother with those. Better tweak your playstyle or the AI spawns.

I'd suggest you give a try by yourself, on Windows there's no way to do it without 3rd party software. I'd suggest you use ImDisk since it's what I've used. Simply mount the whole "Aurora" folder of the portable version with the .exe and database. Also create a bigger drive than the folder since the database will swell up to 2Gb in normal utilisation. DO NOT forget to copy your game to your HDD/SSD before rebooting/crashing Windows.

And also cross the fingers for the C(#) rewrite to get done along with a Linux port.

[Noel.se]

Do Ground Units need to be on the same planet as the brigade/division headquarters they're assigned to to get the bonus?

[Hanzoku]

As far as I know, yes. It's hard for your brigade commander to issue orders to a battalion two systems over, at least.

[Erkki]

I'm diving to the deep end first, so I'll skip the manual and wikis and such. Until later. What would you people recommend for initial opening moves for the first year or two? I started post-newtonian, 500m, lowered difficulty and thats it. I've already started some research projects and started building some more research labs and a deep space tracking station(not sure if it helps me until later). I also have a base colony at Mars with geology survey team but I cant seem to be able to track progress anywhere and the population has remained 0 for 20 days now.

edit: "geological survey team blah blah before orbital survey has been completed".

So, do I need to keep researching for stuff and building for half a year before I can launch a colony?

[Karlito]

You need to be able to produce colony ships to move the people, and freighters to move the infrastructure they need to survive, so probably.

[FritzPL]

Also, make sure you make cargo ships to bring infrastructure and terraformers there. AFAIK, the colony cost on Mars is 2 at start - which means 2 infrastructure per 1m population (DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS)

[Erkki]

Also, make sure you make cargo ships to bring infrastructure and terraformers there. AFAIK, the colony cost on Mars is 2 at start - which means 2 infrastructure per 1m population (DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS)

It seems it is - I am now trying to get all necessary(what I think is necessary) researched more or less the same time while building infra, maintenance tools and stuff beforehand. I'm getting used to the UI after just a couple of hours already - whats driving me nuts is I had to change the localization settings and so typing became a lot more difficult as I have no idea where the buttons are any more. 

[Flying Dice]

Maintenance supplies are irrelevant to colonization and industrial production. They're what military ships use to repair battle damage and routine malfunctions while away from colonies capable of supporting them.

Also note that all you really need is a seed of a few hundred thousand colonists and a bit more infrastructure than they need to support them. Civilian shipping lines will start developing and producing their own ships once you have a colony, and they'll transport colonists and trade good (meaning you don't have to produce it) infrastructure automatically.

[Erkki]

Maintenance supplies are irrelevant to colonization and industrial production. They're what military ships use to repair battle damage and routine malfunctions while away from colonies capable of supporting them.

Also note that all you really need is a seed of a few hundred thousand colonists and a bit more infrastructure than they need to support them. Civilian shipping lines will start developing and producing their own ships once you have a colony, and they'll transport colonists and trade good (meaning you don't have to produce it) infrastructure automatically.

Yes I noticed the civilian shipping, but they just hanged at Earth orbit. Had to transfer colonists and infra myself.

ATM only things bugging me are the way you dont know what you will get from research, the at least seemingly super-unintuitive Naval OOB and TF management system(does it really need 2 menus?!?) and the way planets orbit clockwise.   

[FritzPL]

You have to ship the things first, only after some time the civs will start doing it themselves. You can pump funds into them to help them with that, I forgot where you do that though. Also, I'm too much of a pussy to ever get any further than the first alien encounter - I just turned Aurora off, lost interest or started another game before I had any real combat.

[Flying Dice]

Maintenance supplies are irrelevant to colonization and industrial production. They're what military ships use to repair battle damage and routine malfunctions while away from colonies capable of supporting them.

Also note that all you really need is a seed of a few hundred thousand colonists and a bit more infrastructure than they need to support them. Civilian shipping lines will start developing and producing their own ships once you have a colony, and they'll transport colonists and trade good (meaning you don't have to produce it) infrastructure automatically.

Yes I noticed the civilian shipping, but they just hanged at Earth orbit. Had to transfer colonists and infra myself.

ATM only things bugging me are the way you dont know what you will get from research, the at least seemingly super-unintuitive Naval OOB and TF management system(does it really need 2 menus?!?) and the way planets orbit clockwise.   

The Task Groups and Task Force Organization windows are largely unrelated, and the latter can be safely ignored most of the time. TFs are for managing your overall fleet organization once you hold enough territory to need/want to designate multiple sector commands instead of just grouping everything under your Fleet HQ, and when it comes down to it it's mostly all fluff anyways, except for the bonuses from your TF command staff.

What part of the research output is unclear? All of the projects are literally named for what they grant/unlock and they have explanations when you select them, for example:

Code: (40cm Laser Focal Size) [Select]

Allows the creation of lasers with a 40cm Focal Size (or calibre). Lasers of this type cause a maximum of 40 points of damage.

Code: (Fighter Production Rate 30 BP) [Select]

Annual Production Rate for a Fighter Factory
Shoot specifics at us and we'll answer.

[Erkki]

For example there seems to be nothing in-game that would help me pick which I'd prefer out of the 3 energy weapon types, missiles and so forth. I can probably see what they do once I've researched them, though.

Or what biology research.

Nevermind, I'll be reading the wiki at some point, its not like I'm unfamiliar with uncomplete UIs. I will see if Aurora's economy and logistics wins WitP:AE's in complexity and tediousness, or its pilot training.

[Flying Dice]

Ah, that.

The first thing to know is that the range cap on non-missile weapons means that you're never going to get to utilize the extra range on higher-tier particle beams and lasers. The second is that non-turreted weapons can only traverse at the ship's maximum speed. That aside:

Lasers: Long range, damage which falls off gradually over range. Damage profile is a single column of armor, as deep as the hit is strong. In other words, a Str-9 laser hit would burn through 9 points of armor in a straight line from the outside of the hull towards the interior. What this means functionally is that lasers are exceptionally good if yours are strong enough to punch through enemy armor, but largely worthless against large ships with armor heavy enough to preclude one-shot penetration (because of the lower odds of a second beam landing on the same armor column as the first). Can be turreted or spinal-mount in addition to normal fixed-point hull mounts. Are effective PD weapons, especially smaller ones, and (IIRC) they're the best against plasma torpedoes. Has reduced-size/increased-recharge-time variant tech which makes them suitable for fighters.

Railguns: Somewhat shorter range than lasers, but no damage falloff. Damage profile is akin to buckshot, a number of smaller "craters" taken out of the surface, not dissimilar to missile impact patterns. Thus, railguns are the opposite of lasers in terms of strengths and weaknesses vs. armor. Cannot be turreted.

Particle cannons: Longest theoretical range of any E/KW, no damage falloff, but not particularly spectacular damage either. I don't even remember what the hell their damage profile looks like because they're almost never used except very occasionally by Precursors. Cannot be turreted.

Gauss cannons: Extremely short range, only deal a single point of damage. Almost useless offensively since they sandpaper off single tiles of armor, though they can work in a pinch. Excellent PD weapons when set to final defensive fire. Can be turreted. Suitable for fighters.

Meson cannons: Medium range, deal a single point of damage. They ignore shields and armor to strike directly at the components of enemy ships, and are the only E/KW which can fire through atmosphere without penalty. Obviously they're good both for taking down difficult-to-damage targets and for planetary PD installations on colonies with Earth-normal atmosphere. Can be turreted.

Plasma carronades: Short range, extremely high damage. Seriously, fucking huge damage. They're not that good for much except sitting on top of JPs to ambush attackers, though, since even with extremely high-end stealth systems you'll still be detected before you can get close enough to alpha strike anything. Damage profile is big craters.

But the overwhelming rule is that for offensive purposes missiles are almost always objectively better, due in part to the unfortunately nature of combat in Aurora.