VB6 Aurora:Game Slowdown

Aurora runs a lot of complex calculation, which consequently can put a heavy strain on the CPU. In general, the more stuff the game has to keep track of, the slower the game will run. So, reducing the amount of stuff active keeps your game running fast.

NPR battle slowdown

Sooner or later you will notice the game suddenly taking a long time to calculate events when you click the "30 Days" (or any other) time button. That's usually because of aliens fighting battles in other places in the galaxy.

It can be annoying, but it's an unavoidable side effect of Aurora's detailed battle system and the fact that the aliens play according to the same rules as the players.

To find out what's slowing down your game, go into SM Mode, then open the Event Log window. You might find find entries there that are usually hidden from the player, like "Time increment changed to 00:00:05 due to possible fleet interception" or something similar.

It is hard to say how long a battle can take. It depends on the number of ships involved, systems used, sensor ranges and of course calculation speed is dependent on your computer's CPU. A 30-day turn that used to take 30 seconds to calculate suddenly takes 5 minutes or longer. In some cases players have waited an hour for the turn to finish. But don't give up - it's a temporary condition. Go get some coffee.

How to fight faster battles

If your battle turns take too long to calculate, go into SM Mode and then go to the Contacts tab of the system map window. There is a button labelled "Spacetime bubble in this system". That means it "freezes" everything else in the game. Nothing outside this system moves, detects, produces or eats up valuable CPU time.

Don't forget to switch it off when you're done. Also note that when the enemy is probably calling reinforcements from nearby systems, ST Bubbles could be considered cheating.

Civilian ship slowdown

Too many civilian ships can also slow down the game to some degree (although a few dozen shouldn't be a problem). You can address that by disabling the creation of new ships by shipping lines, or speed things up by manually deleting older\slower civilian ships (Designated by the lower number next to the C/F/H designation)

Universe size slowdown

As the explored universe expands, by yourself, an NPR or something else, your game speed may begin to slow down as Aurora will need to start tracking much larger numbers of systems, planets, orbits etc., especially as more systems will be occupied and more empires will crop up. This is generally an unavoidable side-effect of longer games, however, there are few measure that can help to alleviate this:

• Changing the maximum number of systems to a lower number, Disable all orbital movement from asteroids to planets, and or Change the global detection settings. Done from the start up screen.
• Disable detection in certain key systems. Useful when playing with several player Empires. Go to the Sensor tab of the system map window.

Notes

• The game will pause if you have ships out of fuel but trying to move. You need to delete their movement orders.[1]