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[Zireael]

Just use this then. It's easier.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5663.0

Thanks!!!! Downloaded!

[forsaken1111]

Just use this then. It's easier.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5663.0

Thanks!!!! Downloaded!

Good luck. See you back here in an hour or so to answer your questions.

[Ehndras]

I haven't played this game in 2, perhaps 3 years. Have there been any modifications or updates made recently? I remember briefly trying either a modded or updated version made by fans, but that was a LEAST a year and a half ago. Thank for any replies. I look forward to playing this game again.

[MarcAFK]

Updates around once a year now-a-days, the last updates added a few interesting things, including:
truce timer to prevent NPRS in your starting system from tearing each other to shreads immediately,
Underground infrastructure for colonizing asteroids,
Missiles and fleets now calculate the final interception position of their target and move appropriately rather than constantly chasing the current position of their target,
NPRs now don't need to pay for research, prevents them going bankrupt and stagnating,
Energy weapon impacts now show up on the event log,
NPRs now salvage wrecks,
Shipping lines are smarter and now scrap old ships, they also use larger ships rather than clutter the game up with small ones (they can still get out of hand though)
Forced labour battalions have been added, they function like a construction brigade, but are 4 times larger, are less effective as military, hey're cheaper but require a conqured population, consuming 10k pop each, they also increase unrest when built and don't lower unrest either,
NPR's now terraform.
The next version when it finally drops will most importantly add:
NPR carriers,
An option to change sensor detection rules at game generation, 2 of the new options should immensely help prevent slowdowns.
and finally theres going to be neutral populations that can only be used by civilian colony ships for transport outsystem.

[Defacto]

Does someone know how to deal with traders? According to some info, you are apparently supposed to be able to control what ship classes they use, but for me, they just design huge 250 kT behemoths (10 times the size of anything I have) with Nuclear Pulse engines. I don't really like this, because I'm playing with pretty heavy roleplay and self-limitations, and these super-fast ships that are 5 times the cap of my largest drydock is ruining it.

Is there some way to use SM for either removing shipping lines or transforming their ships into ships I would like civvies to use?

[Dutchling]

They're supposed to only use civilian ships you designed.

Have you not designed any yet?

[Mini]

They've been using their own designs for quite a while now. You might be able to use SM to unlock their designs and edit them (make sure you have the ship design window to show civilian designs), but I haven't tried that and if that doesn't work then it's not possible outside designer mode.

[forsaken1111]

Does someone know how to deal with traders? According to some info, you are apparently supposed to be able to control what ship classes they use, but for me, they just design huge 250 kT behemoths (10 times the size of anything I have) with Nuclear Pulse engines. I don't really like this, because I'm playing with pretty heavy roleplay and self-limitations, and these super-fast ships that are 5 times the cap of my largest drydock is ruining it.

Is there some way to use SM for either removing shipping lines or transforming their ships into ships I would like civvies to use?

Nope. They design their own ships based upon what technology you have available and they build them on their own. You CAN edit the database if you have the designer mode password to make the ship yours so you can delete it. I don't know if you can delete them/change them in SM mode.

[MarcAFK]

You have no control over civilian shipping using SM mode, you can create civilian designs using fast build, but the created classes don't show up for editing.

[Sheb]

Does anyone got a guide for custom Race and system creation? I'd like something different from the standard sol start.

[Ehndras]

You could always try carbon-breathing extremophilic reptiles. I had a custom race, the Ssa'phyrax'eath, or Xe'ath for short: cave-dwelling reptilian organisms who evolved on a world with plety of carbon dioxide and not much oxygen, much like primal Earth prior to the Blue-Green algae blooms that created our massive stores of atmospheric oxygen.

Just play with the values and make something up. If you're not the lore-ish type, I could happily share a few dozen alien races I made for my scifi novel.

[Ehndras]

So I haven't played Aurora in years.

I can't get my damn Longbow-class ships to load their missiles. They're my only military ship, outside of a single Reaper-class salvager and 6 Oculus-class universal Survey ships. My missile mags are size-3, my missiles are size 3, my ship says it can have 159 missiles, yet loading ordinance completes the order and not a damn thing happens. I just lost 3 Longbows meeting my first alien civ, a group of 4 ships I found in the New York system which are hanging out near 3 unidentified wrecks. Their Reaver-class murdered my Reaper-salvager with energy weapons and I lost 2 Oculus and a 4th Longbow due to a barrage of anti-missile missiles from 40-80m miles away.

I obviously didn't get a single shot off, and didn't notice, because my dumbass forgot to make a Res-1 missile scanner and had no missiles on board. I've since created the V-2 Longbow, with 1 CIWS and a R-1 Scanner, a bigger jump drive, and 3333 speed. A definite improvement with a size upgrade from 5,200 to 6,000.

...Still can't get missiles loaded.

What the hell am I doing wrong?

Ship Stats:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Longbow V-2 class Cruiser    6,000 tons     144 Crew     1106.15 BP      TCS 120  TH 140  EM 0
3333 km/s    JR 3-100     Armour 1-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 48/36/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 6
Maint Life 2.26 Years     MSP 230    AFR 144%    IFR 2%    1YR 61    5YR 914    Max Repair 105 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 153   

J6000(3-100) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 6000 tons    Distance 100k km     Squadron Size 3
Halcyon Industries 80 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (5)    Power 80    Fuel Use 47.5%    Signature 28    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,535,000 Litres    Range 96.9 billion km   (336 days at full power)

Halcyon Industries CIWS-320 (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 32000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Halcyon Industries R20 / S-3 Missile Launcher (2)    Missile Size 3    Rate of Fire 20
Missile Fire Control SS-1 / R60 - MR3K-117m (1)     Range 117.1m km    Resolution 60

A-S Sensor MR-5M-R1 / MS6:548K (1)     GPS 28     Range 5.0m km    MCR 549k km    Resolution 1
Halcyon Industries Active Search Sensor MR95-R40 (70%) (1)     GPS 3360     Range 95.6m km    Resolution 40
Halcyon Industries Thermal Sensor TH2-48 (70%) (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  48m km
Halcyon Industries EM Detection Sensor EM-36 / S2 (70%) (1)     Sensitivity 36     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  36m km

ECCM-2 (1)         ECM 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Missile, Launcher, & Mag:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magazine: Halcyon Industries S3 - C49 - Mag: Exp: 10% HTK2 - (Size 3, capacity 49, all component names are coded to reflect stats for easy management.)

Missile: MS-3 W3 - 8.5K - R119M ASM: Size 3, 8.5km/s, 277min endurance, 159.8m km range, 3 Warhead, 24 maneuver rating, 3 rads, and I have 1800 of the damn things on Altarax, my homeworld.

Launcher: Halcyon Industries R20/S-3 Launcher: Size 3, cost 24, 20 second RoF, max missile size 3, crew 9, htk 2.

Seriously, where did I screw up?

[RedKing]

Does anyone got a guide for custom Race and system creation? I'd like something different from the standard sol start.

As in ideas or as in "how do I functionally do this?"

For the latter:

1. Start a new game, under Starting Race select "Create Spacemaster Empire". At this point, all the population, species and starting empire parameters are junk because they'll be tossed out anyways. Everything else is still used though.

2. Create your game.

3. Start the game. Go to Game, Select Default Race, and choose "SM Race" (your only option). Then go to SpaceMaster and select SpaceMaster On.

4. Press F9 to get to the System Display screen. Start hitting "Create System" and/or "Create Nebula" (if you turned Real Stars off).

5. Keep doing so until you find one you like with a suitable world (must have a sufficient amount of either Oxygen or Methane, and no hazardous components such as ammonia, sulfur dioxide, etc.)

6. Select that world, click "HW Minerals", then "Create Empire". From here you can set up your new race. Be sure to select "New Species" and it will generate a species whose tolerances are centered around the temp, gravity and atmosphere of the world you selected.




Now as for ideas:

1. I often like to go back in and add Sol and populate it with an NPR Terran Federation.

2. Methane breathers can be an interesting change of pace. N-O worlds will be poisonous to you, but there's somewhat more methane-bearing worlds out there than oxygen-bearing ones. This is counterbalanced by the fact that these will tend to be in the outer reaches of a system, so more travel time between planets in-system. Another consideration is that I don't think NPRs are EVER generated as methane-breathers, so if you want to try a pacifist run you could do this and try splitting systems with the air-breathers ("you take Earth and Mars, I'll settle Titan"). Your ideal temperature range is liable to be WAY lower, meaning more habitable rocks with a bit of terraforming.

3. Tolerance ranges are calculated as a percentile so starting on a high-gravity world will give you a wider gravity tolerance range. However, there are more rocks in the <1G range than there are in the >1G range. So starting on a smaller planet may open up a wider range of settlements.

4. Keep in mind that certain characteristics tend to "clump" like low G and low atmos. If you start on a high-G world with a thin atmosphere or a low-G world with a thick one, you may have trouble finding suitable worlds without serious terraforming.

5. Gravity is the real stumbling block. Barring atmospheric hazards, atmos gives you a max of x2 colony cost. Temperature can give you a significant malus if it's extreme (a Venusian hellworld with 1300C for instance) but typically a fairly weak effect on most somewhat habitable worlds. Gravity is either a yes/no, not a cost modifer (which is a bit silly). If your gravity tolerance range stops at 0.3G and you find a lovely rich world with 0.29G, it's not colonizable unless you do some genetic modification.

6. With that in mind, I often play *either* a race of terraformers or a race of gene-tinkers, but not both.

7. As far as custom systems, try starting in a nebula. You'll need to dump a lot of tech points into armor early on to manage decent in-system speed. But this also means that your home system is relatively safe for the first 100 years or so, as enemy invaders hit the nebula and are left slow and blind. And when your ships venture outside the nebula, they're going to be over-engineered in terms of armor and sensors.

8. Alternately, with a trinary or quaternary system, you could spend a century just developing your home system (especially with hyperdrives still broken). Craptons of resources if there's plenty of moons and/or asteroids.

[MarcAFK]

Did you actually assign a standard load out on the class design window? There's a tab which shows magazine and hanger space, you assign missiles and fighters to fill that up. Then when you use the reload from collier/colony order it will try to reload to that standard. The other way of loading is manually from the individual ship window.(or is it the task group window?).
Edit: To reload from the individual ship window select the ship you want to reload from the window on the left, click the ordnance management tab, then you have a dropdown with the options: mothership, population, TG colliers, TG non parasite and TG ALL ships. Select whichever option contains your ammo, note that this will only list ships at the same location as the one you want to reload. The dropdown underneath will be a list of ships at the same location which correspond to the selected option (ie mothership, colliers, or all ships, population refers to missiles at the planet you are orbiting).
After selecting a ship with ordnance you should see a list of ammunition in the window underneath. The left window shows what the selected ship has loaded as well as total capacity, the right window shows what the ship selected from the dropdown menu has loaded. To transfer simply doubleclick on the name of a missile to move it from that ship to the other one.
Alternatively you can use the "Fast reload" buttons, which will attempt to reload to your set loadout either from colliers, population or motherships at the same location. Note the fourth button "Standard" is greyed out, this is because when you use spacemaster mode this button will fully reload the ship out of thin air. Which is useful if you make a mistake and forget to set a standard loadout for instance.
Edit: Love the avatar Flying dice, I haven't seen the Space battleship Yamato series yet but assume that's what it's from :p

[Flying Dice]

As Marc said, you need to assign a default ordinance loadout for the class. What's happening is that when you give the order to load ordinance without a loadout, you're ordering the ship/group to load no missiles of any type.