VB6 Aurora:New Game

New Game Creation

When you launch Aurora, you are presented with the Game Detail screen. This screen, by default shows the last game selected (Usually Steve's campaign). To create a new game, click the New button. I'll present the steps as they are shown to you.

• 1. You are asked for a starting year. Type in the year your campaign starts at and click OK.
• 2. Next you are asked if you want Aurora to create Sol and create a race on Earth. If you select No, you will need to create your own starting system and race. We'll click Yes for now. See Tutorial 1a for creating a new system/race.
• 3. Next you need to enter in the number of jump points for the Sol system. We'll enter in 3.
• 4. Next you are asked if you wish to create the race in stages. If you click No, the race will be created randomly. We'll click Yes.
• 5. A suggested species name of 'Terran' is given. You are asked if you wish to change this. We'll click No.
• 6. Next is the suggested maximum deviation in oxygen pressure. In this example it is 45%. We'll leave it at that.
• 7. Next is the suggested maximum atmospheric pressure. In this example it is 2.9. We'll leave this alone too.
• 8. Next is the suggested maximum temperature deviation. In this example it is 23 degrees (Celsius). We'll tweak this to 30 degrees.
• 9. Next is the suggested maximum gravity deviation. In this example it is 60%. We'll leave this alone.
• 10. Next is the suggested race name. The game suggests 'Terran Federation', but we'll change that to 'Confederation of United Terra' with a short race name of 'Confed'.
• 11. Next is the theme. The game has suggested Italia. We'll change that to USA.
• 12. Next is the government type. The default is Player Race. We'll leave this alone.
• 13. The default commander name theme is USA. We'll leave this too.
• 14. Now we are asked if we wish the race to have surveyed the home system for jump points. We'll say yes.
• 15. Next is the suggested population. In this example it is 265m. We'll change this to 750m.
• 16. Next we get a warning that it may take a bit for large populations.
• 17. We get asked if we wish less industry than normal. We'll say no.
• 18. We get asked if we wish to convert ordnance factories to construction factories. We'll say no.
• 19. We get asked if we wish to convert fighter factories to construction factories. We'll say yes.
• 20. We are asked if we wish to set a name for the homeworld. We'll say no.
• 21. Next we are asked about starting research points. In this example we have 180,000. We'll increase this to 250,000.
• 22. Now we are asked if we wish random distribution of the points. We'll say yes.
• 23. The game now goes through the creation process and you will get a notification that the process is complete.
• 24. Now we can change any game settings. We'll just turn on the 'Use Inexperienced Fleet Penalties'. You can hover your mouse over any option and a tip will pop up to explain it. If you change anything, be sure to click Save, then Select. If you do not click Save, your changes will not take effect.
• 25. Now we are at the main screen.

Tutorial 1a - Alternate startup

Welcome to the alternate start up tutorial. In the last tutorial, you'll recall we were asked if we wanted to create the Sol system, and we said yes. In this one, we'll click No, and proceed from there. After clicking No, we are presented with the basic game setup. Consult Tutorial 2 for detailed information. For now, we will click Save, then Select.

We are now looking at the main game bar. In this case the title shows 'New Game #115 1st January 600 00:00'. New Game #115 is the name of the game, and 1st January 600 00:00 is the current game date and time.

First, click the Game Menu and Select Default Race. This brings up a list of all the races in the game. You should only see SM Race. Select that by highlighting and clicking Select, or double-clicking. Our title bar now has changed to show SM Race after the game time. Click the SpaceMaster menu, and SpaceMaster On. Type in your password, if any, and click OK. Our title bar has changed again, adding (SM) to the end to show we are in SM Mode.

Now, we need to create a system for our new empire. Hit the F9 key, or Empires/System View.

We are now presented with a blank system view screen. In the lower right corner you will see a number of buttons. We are interested in the Create Empire and Create System ones. Click the Create System. After a moment, the game will show you the system it has generated. I got lucky on my first shot, with a cost 0.0 planet in the system. You may need to generate a number of systems before you get one that is suitable. Once you have, click your new homeworld. Since this is the SM Race we are still under, click the 'All SB Survey' button. This will run through the mineral generation process for all of the system bodies. Our new homeworld has 46,426,250 (.5) Duranium, 2,944,656 (.5) Tritanium and 15,163,240 (.1) Gallicite. Not very conducive to a burgeoning empire's home planet. So we click the HW Mineral button. This skews the mineral generation process to give all minerals in decent amounts with a fairly good availability.

Our next step is the actual creation of the race. Click the 'Create Empire' button. Make sure you have your homeworld selected, or you'll get an error, or a race where you don't want it. You'll be asked if you wish to create the race in stages, or randomly. If you click No, you will have very limited input as to what the racial makeup is, so we'll click yes. Clicking no is a good option for throwing in NPR's later in the game.

Our first decision is whether to use an existing race or not. We'll say No. We get a suggested species name of Adobreny. We'll accept this. The next question is Maximum deviation in Oxygen pressure. We'll accept the game generated default. Note that this value changes per species. You will not always get the same value every time. Next question is about Suggested Maximum Atmospheric Pressure. Again, we will take the default. Next is the Suggested Maximum Temperature Deviation. This value is in Celsius. We'll take the default value here too. Next we are asked about the Suggested Maximum Gravity Deviation. We will accept the default value here also. Next, we are presented with the suggested Empire name of Adobreny Empire. This sounds good, so we will accept it.

From here, the steps are the same as in Tutorial 1. You will be asked if you wish to change the name of the homeworld. I suggest not changing it, as this will only change it for the SM Race.

Before continuing on to the next tutorial, be sure to select your new empire as the default race.

Game Setup - Technology Setup

This tutorial picks up where part 1 or 1a ended. We should be looking at the main game bar. The tutorials that follow assume the Human race on Sol.

First, click the SpaceMaster menu and select SpaceMaster On. Enter in your SM password and click OK. This will make some of the stuff we want to do a bit easier.

Next, click the Empires menu, and select System View, or hit the F9 key. We want our race to have not only completed a grav survey of the Sol system, but a geo survey too. In the lower right corner you will see a box that says Spacemaster Functions. In this box, click the 'SB Survey' button. This will grant our race the knowledge of what minerals are where in the system. Take a moment to look and see what you get. At this point, your game will be different from what I am seeing. A quick summary of what I've got. Mercury has Duranium Neutronium, Sorium, and Uridium, with Sorium and Neutronium having high amounts and concentrations. Venus has 7 of the 11 minerals, though only Vendarite and Tritanium are above .5 concentrations, and both are 15+ million amount. A few scattered asteroids and moons have minerals. Neptune and Uranus have good amounts of Sorium. At the moment, Titan is the only other system body that is eligible for colonization at 5.67 cost. Go ahead and close this window.

Click the Empires menu and select Economics, or hit F2. The first thing you see is the summary screen. This gives you an overview of your race. Something to look at is the number of shipyards/slipways. We?ve got 7 shipyards and 14 slipways. We?ve also got 120 automated mines. I think we'll move those to Mercury and Venus as soon as possible to start exploiting those planets.

First thing we need to do is build ships. But before we can design ships, we need technology. Click the Research tab. You can browse through the list of what you have available to research. For an experienced player, this will give you a good idea of what has been selected already. For example, I see a lot of early beam techs available and Capacitor Recharge Rate 2. This means Beams will not be a high priority on our warships at the beginning. Scrolling through the list, our missile tech does not seem to fare any better. In the upper right corner, you can see some sorting options for the tech list. Click Completed Research (exc Start). This shows you what the game allocated our 250k research points to. Glancing over the list now, we see the Confederation has active grav sensor strength of 28, internal armor 3, and thermal reduction 25% normal. Click on the Category droplist and select Racial capabilities. Here we see increased fuel efficiency .8 and increased research rates. Click the droplist again and select Ship Components. There is not much here that looks good, beyond Improved Geological Sensors. Turn the sorting back to Available Research Projects.

At the bottom, you should see 8 buttons labeled Research, Design, Instant, Turrets, Instant RST, Fighters, Delete, Missiles. Click Design.

I?ll only walk through creating Lasers. The other tech is very similar in how it is created. You?ll want to go through each category and create some items for each. For lasers, our choices are Laser Focal Length, Laser Wavelength, and Capacitor Recharge Rate. Of these, we?ve only got an increase in wavelength. So we will create a 10cm C1 Visible Light Laser. That is the game suggested name. As you can see, our laser has a maximum range of 60,000 km, a rate of fire of 15 seconds, and does 3 damage. We can change the name or leave the default. We?ll change the name to ?S&W 100mm Laser Cannon?. Click the create button. This creates a research project (shown under Ship Components) for you to research. Go ahead and create the rest of your technology.

As a note, Missile Launchers can be created any size 1 to 24 that you wish. The size of your launchers will affect the size of missiles you can fire. As a practice, I create a size 2 launcher, used for point defense if the fire rate is low enough; and a few sizes (usually even) up through size 8-12 depending on reload rates. I also create size 24 ground based launchers for our PDCs. Note that missile launchers can also fire smaller missiles, so a dedicated PD sized launcher is not always needed.

Once you have created all your basic tech items, you can either research them individually, or click the Instant RST button. This button gives you knowledge on how to build your Race Specific Tech. You will also want to create turrets and missiles. Turrets need to be created AFTER you create some beam weapons to put in them. Not all weapons may be turreted. Turreted weapons are good for point defense and for mounting multiple barrels. Once you have created turrets and missiles, click the Instant RST button again.