Aurora - Dwarf Fortress In Space

Okay, I told my cargo ship to load automated mines, but it arrives at Earth and is "unable to load" the mines. Any ideas?

Two things I can think of:

1. There are no automated mines on Earth anymore (if you gave him a repeating order maybe he already took them all)
2. He doesn't have enough space. Does the freighter design have at least 5 cargo holds? Is he still carrying a couple minerals from some other trip? You can check the later by clicking on the "Cargo" tab on the ship menu. You can click the ship menu at the top (in between "class design" and "fleet"), then select him in the menu of all your ships in the system to the left. Alternatively you can open up the fleet menu, find his task group, and double click on his ship in the ship list to the upper right of the task group window. That will open the ship window with him selected.

This looks like the kind of game I would have tried BEFORE I got married and had two children.

Nowadays, I'm reduced to this for my space fix: Red Fluxion.

Kind of funny that my first two games I never ran into any alien societies after a hundred years or more building my empires. My new game I ran into one on year 14 and boy did they do a number on me. I guess it didn't help that I hadn't built a single war ship. Now I'm just hoping they didn't follow my other ship back to my home world of Galafrey. I guess the age of science and study is over. The age of war begins. I just hope I can get a few warships up soon.

Lets say I want peace with my neighbor. How would I go about contacting them to maybe sign a peace treaty or something like that?

lol It should have enough space. I'll check. I'll be really bummed if my only cargo ship is too small to carry the mines...

Yonder wrote:

I can't recommend this campaign series enough. Just start at story thread #1. The story and behaviour is interesting and plausible, and he goes deeply into some of his design documentation. At the beginning he runs 6 empires individually based from the same planet (Earth power blocs) and he runs them with different motivations so you get a handle on how different strategies may work out. At the beginning you get a lot of feel for small scale and planetary struggle that shows you how flexible the system is, later on when he takes to space you can see some of the more typical gameplay.

He talks through the design process for each type and generation of ships, in particular after one war he writes up a post-action design review meeting that explains the short comings of their craft and what specifically he hoped to fix in the next generation. All in all it was phenomenally interesting and useful, and now I can't wait to design multi-stage missiles, yowza.

Thanks for the link, Yonder. Finished the first section last night and think I might be hooked.

I've been wanting to get into this game for real, and believe me, one day I shall. Competing with Mass Effect 2 though for my gaming affections is a pretty tall order. Love reading about all of your guys' stories till then!

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Lets say I want peace with my neighbor. How would I go about contacting them to maybe sign a peace treaty or something like that?

Did you identify the hostile ships (with active sensors)? Are they a new race or Precursors (robotic ships guarding a planet of a long dead race)?

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Lets say I want peace with my neighbor. How would I go about contacting them to maybe sign a peace treaty or something like that?

This thread should help a bit. Sounds like you will want to assemble a team of charismatic people to do some sweet talking. Later on in the thread (second page) in response to someone elses questions he clarifies that "making contact" really means learning their language, which can be done from your system by going over old tapes and whatnot from the first contact. So you should be able to repeatedly try to do that from home, maybe. Let us know how it goes.

I'm attempting to register on the aurora boards. How long did it take you to get the validation email? Perhaps I'm spoiled but it's been a couple hrs and I've asked it twice to send the email, still no luck.

Markly wrote:

I'm attempting to register on the aurora boards. How long did it take you to get the validation email? Perhaps I'm spoiled but it's been a couple hrs and I've asked it twice to send the email, still no luck.

Hmm, I thought that I got it right away. The thing that annoyed me about the forums is that they have to approve the first five posts in an attempt to fight spam, so it can take quite awhile for those to get through, which was annoying. Considering that those first five posts are probably people new to the game and very confused, it seems like you would want to acclimate them and be more welcoming, but I suppose they have their reasons.

The community is not all that welcoming either. The main few dev and admin are good but everyone else will pretty much tells you to run a search without answering a question, which they obviously haven't tried doing themselves because all searches (which have to be done per sub-forum and not sitewide) come up with a bunch of threads telling people to search.

Edit: Also, the forums are a bit of a mess. There are lots of tutorial posts but they're scattered across several sub forums with little helpful bits of info in each, good luck finding one you want. The wiki isn't much help because it's not a wiki, its a sort of manual. It is fairly shallow without the tons of links that make a wiki so useful.

Edit 2: Basically, there's lots of great info available but its organization makes getting into the game a real rough time

Markly wrote:

I'm attempting to register on the aurora boards. How long did it take you to get the validation email? Perhaps I'm spoiled but it's been a couple hrs and I've asked it twice to send the email, still no luck.

Took a while for me too... requested before lunch... came back and finally got it.

Yeah, I can't stress enough how awesome Steve (the developer) is. I've got a bug in my game (it's taking 38 minute turns because a battle is going on. Somehow in the last 3 weeks the Precursor watchship somewhere has not run out of missiles and his NPR foe hasn't died) and he asked me to email it to him so that he can fix it and email it back. He also freely gives out a ton of info in conversations, but a lot of it isn't organized anywhere.

For example the Shift + left click and hold for drawing distances was just in a random conversation that I happened to read, that's why I've been coming here and passing on those tips. Most of them are pretty helpful but there doesn't seem to be a good way to discover them yourself.

The forums there are kind of like the game: there's a lot there and once you kind of know where stuff is it can be cool, but finding out what you need to know kind of sucks and it's a little sloppily put together.

He just emailed me my fixed save game and pointed out that 38 minutes was the maximum amount of time that a Stargate can remain open. I may be in love.

Let's not forget that the guy keeps changing the game on weekly basis. Many of the tutorials are vague because the specifics have changed 3 times by now. In the last month.

I found that if you follow the tutorials in the tutorial section, it will give you a pretty good overall start. There may be details missing, but once you have the framework in place by completing the tutorials, you will know which questions to ask to get the right answers.

I don't think it can be helped for this game. He is only one game and stuff changes so fast it would be hard to keep up.

On a different note.

What do Bridges and Flag Bridges do?

Why would you put luxury passenger movers on a ship instead of cryogenic mods that hold thousands of more people at the same cost ann size.

Perhaps i'm not destined to post about this game on the boards or download this game. I can't seem to get registered. I contacted the board admin. who says he activated my account and I still can't login to the forum. I suppose if i'm frustrated by trying to accomplish logging into the site I've got no business even thinking about playing this game.

Markly wrote:

I can't seem to get registered.

Sorry to hear that. Personally, I got the confirmation email pretty instantly and they approved all of my first 5 posts within an hour (sometimes minutes) of me posting them.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

What do Bridges and Flag Bridges do?

Any normal ship--this means anything other than fighter and parasites--needs to have a bridge. Flag Bridge is necessary to transfer your fleet command staff onto a ship.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Why would you put luxury passenger movers on a ship instead of cryogenic mods that hold thousands of more people at the same cost ann size.

As per tutorial, you would never want to build a luxury passenger ship yourself. Since civilians always copy your designs for their own ships, you want to define a luxury cruise ship, but not ever actually build one yourself. Let the civilians use that design. And when they do you get a lot more taxes on it.

I guess I'll design some luxury ships for the people. Hey maybe I'll even make MoonDragon governor of Mars.

That a promotion or a punishment ?

Sounds like a promotion to me, although it may be a punishment for Mars.

If he wanted to be mean to Moondragon he'd send him to a Asteroid or Comet.

In related news it seems that a Geological Survey Team isn't needed for Asteroids or Comets, they are small enough that a ship is effective. I realized this after wondering why the survey team that had been on a comet for 15 years hadn't accomplished anything. Two of the five members had died out there.

Alrighty, it's status update time!

We are 41 years into the space age now (after the Conventional start). The Dwarves have been busy improving the solar system as only they can, and due to the rich mineral deposits in the solar system they have so far remained within its borders. We have terraformed Mars into an ideally habitable world, and there is now a substantial colony living there, though the low amount of resources available on Mars means that it is not productive. Work has begun on Terraforming Venus as well, a suitably ambitious project that fits the Dwarvish temperament nicely. There are currently three "Brewer" class Terraformers in low orbit (What better symbolizes life to a Dwarf?) Each has five terraforming modules. Another six ships are nearing completion in the shipyards. Life is too hard on Venus for the colonists to worry about anything other than their survival, so work is underway to place another colony on Saturn's moon of Titan, where our 35 currently unused Terraforming Installations can be put to use.

On Earth we have 897 Construction Factories, and 450 Mines dig into the surface. Scattered throughout the Solar System we have 455 Automated mines, plus another 70 in three separate civilian mining colonies, and 27 mobile Asteroid Miners give us another 135 mining modules. All-in-all we are sucking the system dry at an appreciable rate. Lastly the Dwarves have 40 research facilities.

It's been two decades since we identified the 6 Jump Points in the system, but I wanted to tech up and get an actual military before I made the jump out into the dangerous world. I am now happy with my tech level and need to design and build a few different things.

1: New Grav and Geo Survey ships designed with the improvements in engine technology so that they can operate for a lot longer before refueling.
2: A smallish Watchship designed to scurry around and scout while (hopefully) remaining undetected.
3: A missile Destroyer to attack enemy fleets.
4: An escort frigate using either Meson Beams or Missiles to shoot down enemy missiles.
5: A Jumpship that can take all of these things across.

It's complicated designing all of these things from scratch, since this is my first experience with designing military vessels and I'm starting completely from scratch. I'm going to have to design the missiles, launchers, magazines, meson beams, fire control systems, and sensors all separately first. I can't wait! I'll let you know what I come up with.

Lessons learned from doing just that.

Missiles have a range in the millions of KM. Your MFC (missile fire control) has to have that same range. If you are fighting foes with ECM, you need ECCM or your MFC range shrinks.

Target has to be lit up by Active Search Sensors (ASS), can't fire on something just on passive sensors (EM/Thermal). The ASS can be on a different ship. One ASS lock can allow multiple weapon platforms to fire on that target. The ASS has to have a range equal to or greater than the MFC, and the missile. Or be closer to the target.

BFC (Beam Fire Control) is a separate system. If your ship mounts missiles and beams, you need both a BFC and MFC. You may need more than one B/MFC, if you want to fire on multiple targets, or if you want to be able to effectively fire on ships and missiles. A BFC and ASS suitable for a ship sized target will have problems firing at missiles, for example.

The slower the ship, the easier the target. The faster the ship/missile, the better.

NPRs can and will ram. It hurts. Precursors suck.

Right now I'm working with AWAC style ships to spot the targets from long range (600m km). Then sending in Fast Attack Craft (FAC) with low signature engines. The small FACs are hard to see, even harder if they move in slow and don't have to worry about turning on the ASS. WWII PT boat tactics, slowly sneak in close, empty the launchers in one salvo, and retreat at full speed back to the tender.

Finding the systems with NPRs, erh, lets just say you don't want to be part of a GeoSurvey Task Group. I'm looking into using long range drones to drop geosurvey buoys on the planets of a new system, then if nothing shoots the drone/buoy down, send in the GeoSurvey ships to look over the asteroids/comets/moons.

Markly wrote:

I'm attempting to register on the aurora boards. How long did it take you to get the validation email? Perhaps I'm spoiled but it's been a couple hrs and I've asked it twice to send the email, still no luck.

about 5 seconds for me, well fast enough that as I switched over and loaded my mail up it was there.

LtWarhound wrote:

Right now I'm working with AWAC style ships to spot the targets from long range (600m km). Then sending in Fast Attack Craft (FAC) with low signature engines. The small FACs are hard to see, even harder if they move in slow and don't have to worry about turning on the ASS. WWII PT boat tactics, slowly sneak in close, empty the launchers in one salvo, and retreat at full speed back to the tender.

I'd like to do something like that as well, but for now I don't think I really have the tech to do it properly. Once I can get some better missiles I plan on making 2-3kton Corvettes to behave like that. Or even a 500-1000 ton FAC like you say, based off of a large carrier. For now I am going the missile destroyer route. I've got two missile designs, the Anti-Ship Bolt:

Bolt (160) Speed: 13,300 km/s End: 84.4m Range: 67.3m km WH: 3 Size: 3 TH: 53 / 32 / 16

and the anti-Missile Sparrow:

Sparrow (160) Speed: 21,900 km/s End: 0.6m Range: 0.7m km WH: 1 Size: 3 TH: 189 / 113 / 56

For those of you listening at home, "End" is the endurance of the missile, in minutes, "WH" is the strength of the warhead, "TH" is the percentage chance to hit against a target going 3000, 5000, and 10000 km/sec. The other categories are pretty self-explanatory.

I am currently going down two weapon tech trees, missiles and Meson beams. Both of those can be used as missile defense, and I originally had no idea which would be better at my tech level, so I decided to make both. I am limiting my warships to 7000 tons for now, when I made a Missile Escort that got me 9 launchers, and with my reload times I'd be able to launch two volleys at a "typical" set of incoming missiles, in each volley I will shoot 3 sparrows at 3 different enemy missiles.. My Beam Destroyer, has four turrets, each of which has two beams on it, each of these four turrets will only get one shot at each enemy missile. Long story short the missile design has 4.5 expected kills in each enemy cluster and the beam design has 3.4 expected kills. The last factor is endurance. With my load out I only have the ammo for 12 volleys of enemy missiles. Probably enough, but until I get some battles under my belt I'd rather play it safe with the Meson Destroyer that can handle an unlimited number of volleys.

I am worried that the format won't travel well, but I'd like to get some feedback on my "Coyote" Destroyer and "Buckler" escort so I'll give it a shot.

Coyote class Destroyer 7000 tons 602 Crew 1029.96 BP TCS 140 TH 150 EM 0
1428 km/s Armour 3-32 Shields 0-0 Sensors 16/16/0/0 Damage Control Rating 10 PPV 18
Annual Failure Rate: 39% IFR: 0.5% Maint Capacity 920 MSP Max Repair 72 MSP Est Time: 7.57 Years
Magazine 492

Nuclear Pulse Engine M8 (5) Power 40 Fuel Use 80% Signature 30 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres Range 241.0 billion km (1953 days at full power)

Launcher 3-3 (6) Missile Size 3 Rate of Fire 30
Missile Fire Control 3000T - 64.8M (2) Range 0k km Resolution 60
Bolt (160) Speed: 13,300 km/s End: 84.4m Range: 67.3m km WH: 3 Size: 3 TH: 53 / 32 / 16

Search 5000T - 72M (1) GPS 7200 Range 72.0m km Resolution 100
Thermal 16 (1) Sensitivity 16 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 16m km
EM Detect 16 (1) Sensitivity 16 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 16m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Buckler - B class Escort 7000 tons 641 Crew 953.4 BP TCS 140 TH 150 EM 0
1428 km/s Armour 2-32 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 10 PPV 48
Annual Failure Rate: 39% IFR: 0.5% Maint Capacity 851 MSP Max Repair 44 MSP Est Time: 9.43 Years

Nuclear Pulse Engine M8 (5) Power 40 Fuel Use 80% Signature 30 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,300,000 Litres Range 417.7 billion km (3385 days at full power)

Twin Meson 45 - 5 Turret (4x2) Range 45,000km TS: 13300 km/s Power 6-6 RM 4.5 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Defense Control Beam - A (4) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 63 46 30 13 0 0 0 0 0 0

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Protip: Automated mines and mass drivers are 25,000 units - you need 5 cargo bays for one.

After I "learned" this by mis-designing one class, I made the same damn mistake on my next class.

BTW, how exactly do I build more than one ship in shipyards that have more than one slipway, or whatever they are called? They still only show one ship building at a time.

Ah. I have exactly 25,000 capacity in my freighter, so it picked up one mine and then gave me the failure message for the others. I need a bigger freighter class, clearly.

Robear wrote:

BTW, how exactly do I build more than one ship in shipyards that have more than one slipway, or whatever they are called? They still only show one ship building at a time.

Click the "Add Task" button for the construction project multiple times.