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[Madman198237]

...Race Graphics

Out of all of these I'd say the egg-yolk with an ಠ_ಠ face is the best by far.

Still stuck designing ships, desperately trying not to fall into this mindset. Weapons layout for the current design calls for three single laser turrets, a railgun, one microwave, and two missile launchers. The weapon sizes will change as I tech up, but is the general layout reasonable for a destroyer or similar middle of the road ship?

I am 75% sure without even clicking on it that that link is Pentagon Wars and the Bradley. I would recommend a more focused array of weapons (meaning fewer weapon types), so that your ship has ONE preferred engagement range and sticks at that range, instead of needing to close to get the microwave in range while for most of your weapons would be effective at a longer and thus safer range.

Basically, have a laser ship with some point defense, and/or have a microwave ship (with PD), have a missile ship (with PD or AMMs, either way), and so on; don't have one do-it-all ship that can't do anything nearly as effectively as a more focused ship could.

[coleslaw35]

How do I actually design an effective point defense ship? I've never done it in either Visual Basic Aurora or C# Aurora, instead opting for copious amounts of CIWS on most of my warships.

[Blastbeard]

I am 75% sure without even clicking on it that that link is Pentagon Wars and the Bradley.

Pentagon Wars was actually the second choice, but Fort Squidward sums up the thought process behind my particular case of Bradley Syndrome. I never know what to prepare for, so I try to prepare for everything, overdo it, and then get bodied by something simple I completely overlooked.

I would recommend a more focused array of weapons (meaning fewer weapon types), so that your ship has ONE preferred engagement range and sticks at that range, instead of needing to close to get the microwave in range while for most of your weapons would be effective at a longer and thus safer range.

My engagement range is pretty uniform, everything except the missiles is keyed to 120,000 km, even the microwave thanks to some splurging with starting tech points. The lasers technically reach 160,000, but I remembered that the damage drops off towards the end and I designed the fire control with that in mind. The missiles I was planning to use at the start have a range of just over 18m km. The plan was to open with missiles, close to gun range, pummel the enemy until their shields pop, and then either disable the enemy with the microwave or just finish it off.

Basically, have a laser ship with some point defense, and/or have a microwave ship (with PD), have a missile ship (with PD or AMMs, either way), and so on; don't have one do-it-all ship that can't do anything nearly as effectively as a more focused ship could.

Sounds like my best choice would be to rip off the design philosophy behind Stellaris's corvettes. I could go with four laser turrets, drop the railgun and microwave, and give the missiles to a dedicated ship. Missile boat hangs back and throws rocks while the laser ship runs in to deal damage and intercept missiles, preferably with its guns.

My biggest problem at the moment is jump squadron size. I wasted my starting tech points on other stuff so I'm stuck with with small fleet sizes for... awhile, not sure how long since for some reason I can't resize the completion date bracket in the research screen.
I agree do-everything ships are a slippery slope, but I also need to get the most bang for my buck out of what little I can send out at the moment. strike craft sound good on paper, but the phrase 'low-tech fighter' keeps auto-translating into meat grinder for some reason.

[Lord Shonus]

for some reason I can't resize the completion date bracket in the research screen.

Aurora pulls the date from Windows, so you can eliminate this problem by changing the Windows display setting. In the Date And Time Settings, click "Change Date And Time Formats" and set the Short Date to M/d/yyyy and long date to MMMM d, yyyy. You should now see the completion date for all tasks, and probably won't notice differences anywhere else.

[Kanil]

not sure how long since for some reason I can't resize the completion date bracket in the research screen.

Your research will finish on Tuesday, what more do you need to know?

[Salmeuk]

That's the first patch that Chrome tried to stop me from downloading because it's "not commonly downloaded".


On the other hand, while trying to extract the patch from the archive, there was some annoying difficulty of actually getting Aurora.exe to copy into the game folder(it did this with one of the other patches). Simply dragging it from the archive to the folder didn't work. I had to right click the file in the archive, extract to desktop, then right-click drag(because normally dragging defaults to Create Shortcut, not Move) to move it into the folder. Just Windows 10 bullshit.

I ran into this, hold cntrl while dragging to force it to not create the shortcut and just replace the files. Though apparently we should just be deleting the old ones, anyways!

I am frustrated that the new interface is so dark. The text is just a little bit too small for easy reading, whereas the old interface was kind of ugly it served it's purpose well. Does anyone know a way to change the interface style or text size? I just might have to buy some cheap reading glasses.

[EuchreJack]

Sounds like my best choice would be to rip off the design philosophy behind Stellaris's corvettes. I could go with four laser turrets, drop the railgun and microwave, and give the missiles to a dedicated ship. Missile boat hangs back and throws rocks while the laser ship runs in to deal damage and intercept missiles, preferably with its guns.

My biggest problem at the moment is jump squadron size. I wasted my starting tech points on other stuff so I'm stuck with with small fleet sizes for... awhile, not sure how long since for some reason I can't resize the completion date bracket in the research screen.
I agree do-everything ships are a slippery slope, but I also need to get the most bang for my buck out of what little I can send out at the moment. strike craft sound good on paper, but the phrase 'low-tech fighter' keeps auto-translating into meat grinder for some reason.

Jump Squadron size only matters if you want to go in hot, that is engage hostiles as soon as you jump in, which is a terrible idea if you can avoid it due to jump sickness.  Otherwise, your jump ship should just bounce between systems ferrying everyone in the fleet, if you chose the right fleet movement option.  Might have to go manual for a bit to get it to work, with dividing fleets and such, but should be possible without all that.

While I know that an all-missile ships is best, part of me always wants to stick some sort of non-ammo dependent weapon onboard.  But the cost in tonnage for just a simple laser backup system, for example, really eats away at the effectiveness.

The biggest advantage of fighters is that they're made from fighter factories instead of shipyards, so its easier to keep them up to date and they don't detract from other ship building.  I generally design at least one for those reasons alone.  So at least one carrier isn't a bad idea.  Low-tech fighters in C# are a lot better than in the old version, and require fewer idiotic sacrifices for the First fighter design(s).  Most of those "need to research fighter stuff" have been eliminated.  It's really just the weapons that might still need research to make fighters more effective, but they even made Box Launchers into a starting tech!

[JWNoctis]

I know I'm again tempted to go all-or-nothing and leave missiles larger than AMM's (along with their juicy magazines) out of line combatants, with carriers fielding strike fighters sitting in the back.

Haven't figured out yet whether this would work better in C# compared to VB6 or not, given the sensor and tracking changes - Not that I ever really got a chance to find out back there, other than it still sounding like an quick way to get keel-hauled by anyone with superior or even similar engine tech.

[Lord Shonus]

Unless I've done something screwy, I've found a dangerous bug in Naval Organization. Detatching a fleet with subfleets removes the subfleets and renders the ships that were in them inaccessible.

[EuchreJack]

Unless I've done something screwy, I've found a dangerous bug in Naval Organization. Detatching a fleet with subfleets removes the subfleets and renders the ships that were in them inaccessible.

What happens if you reattach them?

[Lord Shonus]

Unless I've done something screwy, I've found a dangerous bug in Naval Organization. Detatching a fleet with subfleets removes the subfleets and renders the ships that were in them inaccessible.

What happens if you reattach them?

It merges into the main fleet instead of reattaching as a subfleet. If there were loose ships in there, they merge fine, but the subfleets remain gone.

[Ranged66]

If you kinda hate the blue color like me and want something more of a night mode, someone made a version that has all windows in gray.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora4x_mods/comments/g2ffef/mod_night_mode_resize_windows/

You can also resize them, which is pretty useful.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

This is also highly frowned upon by Steve, who has threatened to take the game private if modding becomes to prevalent.

If you are going to use a mod, don't submit any bug reports.

[Eschar]

This is also highly frowned upon by Steve, who has threatened to take the game private if modding becomes to prevalent.

Why?
I understand it's his preference to have and his game to enforce, I'm just curious about why it is his preference.

[Shooer]

To prevent muddled bug reports that are from a modded version.  He doesn't want to waste time to have to find a fix for something he doesn't have access to.  I mean look at how much he quashed in the past few days.  Glad he didn't have to chase his tail on any bugs caused by a user messing with something.

It's the same policy he had with the designer password from VB6 Aurora.  He didn't want it getting out and every time it did he changed the PW.  He didn't want to have to chase his tail on a bug from people messing with the games workings.  But all you had to do was ask for the PW, and agree that you would mention if you were messing with the database if you posted a bug.

Steve will probably be fine with people modding the game, in a month or so.  Until then I'd keep it on the down low.

If people do find ways to "mod" fixes or usability changes into the game I have a feeling if you provided detailed info on what you did to Steve then he might implement it.  The problem right now is the guy who did the accessibility mod said he contacted Steve and was ignored, but that turned out to be a lie.