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[Descan]

So I'm trying to get my screen resolution to allow me to play this game. I'm on a laptop, with an Intel integrated "HD" graphics "card", and I can't force it to give me a higher resolution (trying to make a custom resolution, says "exceeds maximum bandwidth," even when I set it as a test to 1366x766 @60Hz, the native resolution. Fucking useless programs.)

Can't seem to google-fu myself a program to force a fake-resolution to allow me to see the whole windows, so any help would be appreciated. :v

[Flying Dice]

So I'm trying to get my screen resolution to allow me to play this game. I'm on a laptop, with an Intel integrated "HD" graphics "card", and I can't force it to give me a higher resolution (trying to make a custom resolution, says "exceeds maximum bandwidth," even when I set it as a test to 1366x766 @60Hz, the native resolution. Fucking useless programs.)

Can't seem to google-fu myself a program to force a fake-resolution to allow me to see the whole windows, so any help would be appreciated. :v

* Flying Dice points at his sig.

Unless you're a good bit lower than 1024x768, then you might be SOL.

[Descan]

That hadn't worked for me, but I did eventually find a hack through something called "Infinite Scroll"

Doesn't resize the windows or resolution, but it does let me scroll them down so that I can actually see (most) of the buttons that are hidden below my resolution. Very hacky but whatever.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, that's one of the other things I looked at back when I needed it, but it was even more of a pain for me to use.

[MarcAFK]

Easiest and recommended solution is to get an external monitor, it's really helpful to have 2 for aurora anyway, considering you spend a lot of time waiting for turns to finish, load up a book or movie or whatever on the other screen, or keep a window you don't need at full resolution or don't mind the scroll, the events window or system map or whatever.

[Descan]

I do have one, a TV I use at home, but I'm not home

[Descan]

... So, any particular reason my ships keep wrecking? I've had three geo-survey ships, three grav-survey ships, and 5 freighters all wreck themselves mysteriously while doing their jobs, with the freighters just transporting infrastructure from Earth to Luna. Without any log of some sort, I don't know what caused them to blow up all mysterious-like.

[Karlito]

Battle damage or maintenance failures should show up in the event log. Are your freighters classed as civilian vessels? If you've given them a military-grade engine, they likely don't have the engineering supplies to maintain it.

[Flying Dice]

Yep. That's almost certainly it. The threshold for Commercial drives is at or above 25HS volume and at or below x0.50 Engine Power.

Alternatively, you can just turn off maintenance requirements to avoid the micromanagement and design and order your military vessels as if it weren't (or just 'cheat' outright and ignore the failure rates).

[Descan]

How do I get to the event log? I must have missed that.

Also, I noticed the thing about maintenance, but I gave them more engineering space to compensate. Maybe they weren't resupplying the engineering space when they refueled? That might be it.

Also, no, they were military grade freighters. I still don't fully understand the civilian/military thing. Do I just need to design a commercial engine and the civilians will take care of the rest? Or do I actually need to design a civilian freighter? Do I need to re-tool the commercial space-port to that freighter, if I have to design it, or...? I'm really not sure. I've had one game where the civilians did do some ship building, after I had cryogenic transport researched and had infrastructure on Luna, but I don't know much more than that about why or how they started functioning. I know they were shipping colonists to Luna, but I don't know if they were shipping anything else. I do know that the civilian demand/supply thing wasn't working, or didn't look like it was working.

[Flying Dice]

Military: Does it have a military drive (The statblock will tell you if it's commercial; if it doesn't say commercial it's military) or military jump drive? Does it have a grav survey sensor? Does it have an active sensor or passives larger than 50t? Does it have shields, a cloak, ECM, or any weapons other than CIWS? If yes, it's military.

Commercial: Everything else.
--

There's also a distinction:

Military: Ships you build which have modules tagging them as military; typically these are warships, gravsurvey ships, and some troop transports (i.e. the ones with defenses greater than armor and CIWS)

Commercial: Ships you build which are not military. This is everything from geosurvey ships to freighters to fuel harvesting stations.

Civilian: Ships built by the AI shipping lines.

You design your ships however you like, building military ships at military shipyards and commercial ships at commercial shipyards. One of the reasons you don't want to make your commercial ships classified as military is because military shipyards are designed to build much smaller ships; typically your largest military shipyard will be capable of producing ships 1/10th the size of your largest commercial shipyard. There's also obviously the benefit of commercial shipping not needing to worry about maintenance.

Civilian shipping lines design and build their own vessels using the technology you've researched and imaginary infrastructure. Up until a few versions ago they instead would build ships based on your own commercial designs, but this was changed for a number of reasons. They'll automatically decommission old ships based on a number of criteria, including age and the number of newer ships they have.

Civilians will only start building ships, trading, and shipping colonists/infrastructure once you've seeded your first extraterrestrial colony. They won't colonize planets on their own, either, except for building automated mining colonies.

[Culise]

Sorry about this, but I think I'll just do a general overview since I'm not sure where your sticking point is.  Plus, it might help some others as well.  ^_^

Event Log
The event log can be seen in-game through three methods that I'm aware of off the top of my head:

1. From the main menu, under SpaceMaster, select "Event Updates"
2. Press Ctrl+F3
3. From the system screen, select the button second from the right from the menu in the top of screen (blue background, with a golden sphinx overlaid over a key and two lightning bolts; located between the Refresh icon and the gold rosetta)

The third is the one I use most often, personally. 

On Shipping Lines/Civilian Ships
Shipping lines use their own designs; you do not need to worry about designing ships for them at all anymore.  On the flip side, even if you want to change their designs, you can't do so as easily.  They will automatically begin development once you establish your first extraterrestrial colony; Mars and now Luna are typically the most likely targets for this.  Civilian designs will be restricted by your available technology - as you observed, colony ships won't appear until you have cryogenic transport.  Civilian designs will also always be commercial ships; they will not design their own private military force.  That said, not all commercial ships are civilian: you will almost certainly find it necessary to operate your own commercial ships, both to create the seed for any colonies (either by planting infrastructure or colonists) and to also give yourself some operational flexibility, such as if you need such and such a PDC on such and such a world immediately. 

The best use for shipping lines is the steady supply of free fuel harvesters, freighters, and colony ships.  I mention this mostly as prelude to the civilian supply/demand issues you seemed to encounter: while fuel harvesters and colony ships cannot be controlled (though you can refuel from the former), you can ask their freighters to ship planetary facilities for you by using the "Civilians / Ind Status" tab on the Population and Production page (from which you can also access Planet Summary, Industry, Mining, Shipyards, Research, and so forth).  By creating a Supply contract for an available facility on one planet and a Demand contract on another, freighters will automatically move the facilities from source to destination, though this will cost you some minor amount of Wealth. 

On Commercial Ships
Commercial designs have designs in the game that do not break down due to equipment failure and do not require overhauls.  They may also be constructed from both commercial and military shipyards, though as the former can expand their tonnage at (if I recall properly) ten times the speed for a tenth of the cost of the latter, while military designs can only be built at military shipyards, it's rare that you'll be devoting military shipyards to commercial construction.  Essentially, they bypass fiddly micromanagement and resource consumption on maintenance.  There are key requirements for any commercial design:

1. Your ship must have a minimum Deployment Time (under Crew Accommodations) of 3 months.  It can be higher, but no lower. 
2. You must have at least one Engineering Spaces.  No gaming the maintenance system by swapping in smaller ones or stripping it out entirely. 
3. You cannot use any military components. 

That last one is the real clincher, and one that requires further elaboration. 
1. Military engines and jump drives are explicitly displayed as military equipment; military jumpdrives are selected from a drop-down on the tech design screen and thus must be specifically created, while military engines are automatically designated based on the criteria stated earlier by Flying Dice. 
2. All weapon systems except CIWS turrets are military systems. 
3. All boat bays and hangers are military systems.  No staging military ships out of commercial carriers. 
4. All active sensors are military systems. Any active sensors that are larger than 1 HS (50t) are military systems.
5. Gravitational survey sensors are always military.
6. Any passive sensors that are larger than 1 HS (50t) are military systems. 
7. Most defensive systems (ECM, shields, cloaking devices) are military.  Armor thickness, however, is not subject to any restrictions. 

These restrictions have some major consequences for commercial design.  First, as Flying Dice noted with the design requirements, civilian engines must be big (at or above 25 HS) and power-inefficient as far as tonnage is concerned.  This essentially means that, for equivalent thrust power, the thermal signature of civilian engines will be as subtle as a wet cat being dragged across a chalkboard, while without active sensors and with only tiny passives, they are as blind as Samuel of Bulgaria's army.  As such, these are not ships that should typically be operating in dangerous situations (unless you use the bullet-sponge to break the AI), especially in isolation. 

With those consequences out of the way, what commercial ships can do is run your economy.  Ignoring freighters and colony ships, other important ship designs that rely on commercial components include:
1. Asteroid miners and fuel harvesters: Collect and refine minerals and sorium without setting up colonies
2. Terraformers: Terraforming ships, due to receiving bonuses from the captain as well as the planetary governor, work faster than planetary facilities
3. Salvage ships: Alien wreckage, whether discovered or "created" by your military, can be a useful source of both research points and minerals. 
4. Jump gate constructors: With these to stabilize jump points, your civilians and non-jump-capable commercial designs will be able to leave your home system. 
5. Geological survey ships: While frequently built military-capable (either for self-defense or for cross-construction design compatibility with gravsurvey ships), there is quite a bit to recommend commercial designs that will never break down five jumps away from the nearest repair facility. 
6. Fuel tankers: Supply your military ships with fuel without worrying about your supply train falling apart.  Maintenance Storage Bays may be military, but if you stack on enough engineering spaces, you can still resupply with maintenance supplies as well. 

Many of these tend to lend themselves to massive designs that, if they were military, would require prohibitive amounts of Engineering Spaces to keep from breaking down the second they break orbit.  As commercial designs, however, you never need to worry about them falling apart, short of enemy action.  Fuel harvesters and terraformers in particular tend to be built large with many modules, while recreational modules and jump gate constructor modules are themselves large even in isolation.  As such, bypassing the maintenance system is very, very nice for these sorts of designs. 

Here's a few sample designs from my present game, if you're curious to see.  I can't vouchsafe their efficiency, but it might give you some food for thought.

Spoiler: Samples from my present game (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Long Hauler class Freighter    200,000 tons     529 Crew     1654.8 BP      TCS 4000  TH 5040  EM 0
1260 km/s     Armour 1-304     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 5    Max Repair 27 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cargo 125000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 35   

Uhlman-Challis Systems IDC-1000 (28)    Power 180    Fuel Use 1.73%    Signature 180    Exp 3%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres    Range 39.0 billion km   (358 days at full power)

Tesla-Leicht Institute TDC 1/5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
Tesla-Leicht Institute EDC 1/6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]

Decoud class Salvager    72,000 tons     267 Crew     985.2 BP      TCS 1440  TH 1400  EM 0
972 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 1-154     Shields 0-0     Sensors 5/8/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 9    Max Repair 200 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 1   
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 10   
Salvager: 1 module(s) capable of salvaging 500 tons per day

Song Foundation JDC-L1000     Max Ship Size 72000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Uhlman-Challis Systems MDC-1000 (7)    Power 200    Fuel Use 0.94%    Signature 200    Exp 2%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 265.9 billion km   (3166 days at full power)

Tesla-Leicht Institute TDC 1/5 (1)     Sensitivity 5     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  5m km
Tesla-Leicht Institute EDC 1/8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]

Laurentia class Terraformer    254,550 tons     1010 Crew     5669.6 BP      TCS 5091  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-357     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 14    Max Repair 500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2   
Terraformer: 10 module(s) producing 0.012 atm per annum


This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Code: [Select]

Leeds class Fuel Harvester    147,950 tons     510 Crew     2717 BP      TCS 2959  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-249     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 11    Max Repair 30 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 3   
Fuel Harvester: 50 modules producing 1000000 litres per annum

Fuel Capacity 20,000,000 Litres    Range N/A

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes


EDIT:
Also, got the "one new reply" notification, posted anyways because I didn't feel like scrapping the post. Flying Dice says it much more succinctly and effectively above. 

[MarcAFK]

Maintenance storage bays and magazines also mark a ship as military. But you can make a commercial maintenance hauler by filling a ship with engineering spaces, it's nowhere as efficient though as you get 36 MSP instead of 1000 for 250 tons. Of course you can make the ship 10 times bigger.

[Micro102]

How does one get more information on an enemy? It would be nice to know the design of their ships, or what research they have.

[Flying Dice]

1. Passive sensor readings. Generally higher thermal = more drive volume.

2. Active sensor readings. Usually it takes a couple intervals to get everything. This'll give you their hull size and (observed) maximum speed.

3. Salvaging their wrecks. This will semi-randomly give you knowledge about specific components/levels of tech used in the ship class you salvaged.

4. IIRC interrogating POWs from NPR lifepods can give you knowledge of their designs.

5. Capturing their ships with Marine Company boarding parties. This gives you full knowledge of whatever class you capture, obviously.

6. Forcing them to capitulate will give you knowledge of their techs, exploration, and control over some surviving ships.

3 doesn't work for SS, 4 and 6 don't work for non-NPRs, and 5 working on SS is pretty much an unintended feature.