Aurora - Dwarf Fortress In Space

Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Well, I installed it on my laptop and couldn't get it to run. I took it as a sign.

That you would be as weak and ineffectual as your laptop?

Exactly.

I have been reading the tutorial in preparation for jumping into this sometime this week/weekend and so far it looks like it has a lot of potential. Some parts of the tutorial give you a brief glimpse to the sweetness of the game.

Tutorial[/url]]
Comets are good in the sense that they usually have accessible mineral deposits, often in the ten of thousands of tons range, but bad in the sense they may disappear into the Oort cloud with your mining colony and come back in a few thousand years .

Grubber788 wrote:

I tried to start a game last night, but didn't even know how to start, even with the wiki. It should say something to its potential that I want to try again tonight, with a much closer look at the wiki. I might be in over my head.

It's not that hard. With a minimum amount of effort I managed to start some research; perform some geosurveys around the solar system; build bases on a few plants/moons (with mixed success); and transport some colonists and materials onto Mars. Had I put in another couple of hours I'm sure I'd figure out how to build mines on Titan, generate auto freighter routes, actually get some production going on on Mars, and start making sense of the galaxy.

MoonDragon wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

I tried to start a game last night, but didn't even know how to start, even with the wiki. It should say something to its potential that I want to try again tonight, with a much closer look at the wiki. I might be in over my head.

It's not that hard. With a minimum amount of effort I managed to start some research; perform some geosurveys around the solar system; build bases on a few plants/moons (with mixed success); and transport some colonists and materials onto Mars. Had I put in another couple of hours I'm sure I'd figure out how to build mines on Titan, generate auto freighter routes, actually get some production going on on Mars, and start making sense of the galaxy.

And you dig too greedily and too deep. Demons and fire pour out of the mountains of Titan, and skeletal whales crawl out of its methane oceans. The last communication from the mining colony is a picture. All craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It is embroidered with flecks of static. On the picture is an image of a man. The man is crying.

Yonder wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

I tried to start a game last night, but didn't even know how to start, even with the wiki. It should say something to its potential that I want to try again tonight, with a much closer look at the wiki. I might be in over my head.

It's not that hard. With a minimum amount of effort I managed to start some research; perform some geosurveys around the solar system; build bases on a few plants/moons (with mixed success); and transport some colonists and materials onto Mars. Had I put in another couple of hours I'm sure I'd figure out how to build mines on Titan, generate auto freighter routes, actually get some production going on on Mars, and start making sense of the galaxy.

And you dig too greedily and too deep. Demons and fire pour out of the mountains of Titan, and skeletal whales crawl out of its methane oceans. The last communication from the mining colony is a picture. All craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It is embroidered with flecks of static. On the picture is an image of a man. The man is crying.

This is the most beautiful use of the written word ever.

Chipping away at the game. So far it isn't to bad. He could have made many things easier. For example I have no idea how to figure out what planets you can settle on. I know it is based on a set of numbers given to you but I have no idea how those numbers translate into figuring out good planets to live on.

Vector wrote:
Yonder wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

I tried to start a game last night, but didn't even know how to start, even with the wiki. It should say something to its potential that I want to try again tonight, with a much closer look at the wiki. I might be in over my head.

It's not that hard. With a minimum amount of effort I managed to start some research; perform some geosurveys around the solar system; build bases on a few plants/moons (with mixed success); and transport some colonists and materials onto Mars. Had I put in another couple of hours I'm sure I'd figure out how to build mines on Titan, generate auto freighter routes, actually get some production going on on Mars, and start making sense of the galaxy.

And you dig too greedily and too deep. Demons and fire pour out of the mountains of Titan, and skeletal whales crawl out of its methane oceans. The last communication from the mining colony is a picture. All craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It is embroidered with flecks of static. On the picture is an image of a man. The man is crying.

This is the most beautiful use of the written word ever.

I'll be in my bunk.

EDIT: First impression... this is what we'd get if IBM ever decided to get into gaming.

I'm going to poke at this over the weekend. Remember me fondly, if at all...

Actually, I think Distant Worlds is going to distract all of us in about a month.

Hmm, I had never heard of that, now I'll have to look into it.

Well, this is me talking and we all know how I feel about Dwarf Fortress and games of that ilk, but I think I'll skip Aurora, I've already got a job

Spoiler:

It is to kill Quintin Stone wherever I may find him.

I read the wiki clip. I looked at the screenshots. I'm not too insecure to admit that a little pee came out.

Carl

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Chipping away at the game. So far it isn't to bad. He could have made many things easier. For example I have no idea how to figure out what planets you can settle on. I know it is based on a set of numbers given to you but I have no idea how those numbers translate into figuring out good planets to live on.

According to the wiki: you can put ground bases, troops, sensors etc. on any world except a gas giant, regardless of the habitability. If you want an actual population though, which you will need to run shipyards, factories, etc, then the planet has to be habitable or at least have enough infrastructure for the inhabitants.

In other words, you can colonize anything but a gas giant, assuming you build enough habitats (infrastructure) to support the population. If you do not have enough infrastructure the population you ship there will die off with the speed dependent upon how bad the conditions are. In addition, each colony that is not 'habitable' will cost you upkeep. Planets that are close to earth and therefore habitable will cost you next to nothing to upkeep. Planets like Venus will cost you an arm and a leg to upkeep. Planets that are not habitable due to atmospheric or temperature reasons can be terraformed. Planets that are out of your gravitational tolerance can never be made habitable.

Your species' needs you define at the beginning of the game. You specify which gas your species needs to breathe (e.g. oxygen for humans). You specify what range of that gas pressure your species can tolerate for survival. You also specify the atmospheric pressure, gravity and temperature tolerances. Finally there is an implicit tolerance, or rather intolerance, to poisonous gases. All values are set up as a percentage of the starting home planet values. Those are considered as nominal. Except atmospheric pressure, which is a single absolute threshold. Oh, and finally the breathing air has to have the appropriate percentage within the colonizable atmosphere, on top of the required pressure.

So, assuming that you're a human from Earth, you breathe oxygen. It comprises 30% of the atmosphere, which has 1 'atmosphere' (atm) of pressure. This implies a nominal oxygen pressure of 0.3 atm. Your nominal temperature is around 22 celsius with +/-22 degrees tolerance. You can handle approximately up to 4 atm's of pressure. Your optimal gravity is 1.

Practically this would end up as: your oxygen tolerance would be, let's say, 50%. That means that in order for an atmosphere to be breathable the oxygen pressure has to be 0.45-0.15 atm. It also has to meet the percentage of total atmosphere requirement. It would stand to reason that it should not be more than 30%, as breathing pure oxygen is not a good thing. Temperature can be controlled through terraforming as well. At any point in time you can add greenhouse gases (warm up), anti-greenhouse gases (cool down), or even remove gases from the atmosphere (to lower the pressure, or remove poisons).

Finally the cost, according to the wiki, is computed based on the following set of calculations (pick the max):

  • If the atmosphere is not breathable, the colony cost is 2.0.
  • If there are toxic gases in the atmosphere then the colony cost will be 2.0 for some gases and 3.0 for others.
  • If the pressure is too high, the colony cost will be equal to the Atmospheric Pressure divided by the species maximum pressure with a minimum of 2.0
  • If the oxygen percentage is above 30%, the colony cost will be 2.0
  • The colony cost for a temperature outside the range is Temperature Difference / Temperature Deviation. So if the deviation was 22 and the temperature was 48 degrees below the minimum, the colony cost would be 48/22 = 2.18

See? Simple enough.

I get a distinctly Harpoon-ish vibe off that AAR. This might be worth looking at.

At this point I know how to make ships, research, and give group orders. I ran into a 36502 error that was easy enough to fix by renaming a ship that shared the same name with another ship.

I don't know why, but this is drawing me in as I read the tutorials and fiddle around. I'll put some time in this weekend and see if it holds up.

I've had a few crashes, and I can't assign civilian leaders, or select a class to allow building of a ship. Not sure what's going on with that... I asked on the main forums but the question has not got through QA yet.

Looks like 1440x900 is not big enough to show the bottom of all the screens... I switched to a scrollable 1600x1200 config and there were more buttons. This, I do not like.

That's lazy UI design.

This game has a lot of general wonkiness from random database errors to tortuous workflow to a UI only an accountant could love (and maybe not even then...) to a Himalayan learning curve (mainly due to very little feedback for decisions you make).

...and yet, I have started yet another game when I could be playing a lot of other things....

Now I find out that the "required" display is only 1280x1024, so there's something else going on.

Robear wrote:

I've had a few crashes, and I can't assign civilian leaders, or select a class to allow building of a ship. Not sure what's going on with that... I asked on the main forums but the question has not got through QA yet.

To assign a shipyard to build a ship class the shipyard has to be big enough to build the ship. On the manage shipyard tab pick a shipyard and choose the retool for selected class option. Then pick a class of ship.

I don't know how to assign leaders yet. I have it on auto assign at the moment.

Also, you have to retool the shipyard to build ships of a given class before you can actually build something. In the Manage Shipyards tab, there's a dropdown in the middle that let's you assign activities to the shipyard, one of these is "Retool". You then select the class you want that shipyard to build. It takes some resources and a little time.

After the shipyard has been retooled, you can then build a ship of that class.

You assign a civilian leaders by selecting Civilian Administrators from Leader Type dropdown on the the Commanders screen. Click on a leader (list on left side of screen) and it will show potential assignments in the left-middle (Potential Assignments list). Click on an assignment and hit the Assign button (lower right).

Note, that it seems like when you start, you can only assign the Governor of Earth, since you don;t have any other colonies.

Other assignments can be carried out in a similar manner. It will only show you things that a Commander can actually be assigned to, so if the person is too high or low ranking, you may not see anything that they can do.

Baron, I don't think you can auto-assign civilian administrators, can you? Did it give you a Governor automatically? Does it take 5 days?

All my guys are greyed out for Governor of Earth for some reason, even though they appear to be qualified.

I don't think Civilian administrators get auto-assigned, I have never seen it actually happen at least.

I think "greyed out" means "unassigned". Also, despite all the other Leader Types hiding assignments that they cannot be assigned to, Civilian Administrators appear to have show all the civilian jobs.

No, I mean greyed out as in "can't be selected for that role". If I check the "show only eligible" box for my CAs, the planetary governorship disappears. This with 8 CAs with levels ranging from 2 to 8.

LobsterMobster wrote:

What we really need is Dwarf Starship.

Piloted by Lancelot Bon Varlet.

I used to listen to them when they were Jefferson Dwarf Starship

Robear, if you don't click that box, but select an administrator, then click on one of the colonies, then click the 'Assign' button, what happens?

Nothing. The role is not filled. (I had to switch screen res to even see that button, btw. Which is not supposed to be needed...)

I find that double clicking to assign is a highly precarious process. I'm curious about something...

When you first start Aurora, bring up 'Leaders' dialog (by pressing f4). Then, without doing anything else, click on the drop down box for "Leader Type"; select "Civilian Administrators". Now, please make sure that the "Potential Assignments" drop down reads "Populations and Sectors" AND that the "Assign to any Location" box is checked at the bottom (but not the "Eligible Only" box). Once those have been double checked click on one of the lower level administrators (A1, or A2 rank); then click on "Governor of Earth"; then click on "Assign" button. What happenes?