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=Overview=
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{{vb6}}
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This tutorial, while a couple versions old, takes you through the basic process of creating a new game and getting the starting technology and infrastructure setup.
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[[file:New_Game.PNG|thumb|alt="New Game Setup"|New Game Setup]]
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When you start Aurora, the first thing you should see is a small window with ''[[Game Details]]'' in the title bar. Across the bottom are four buttons: New, Save, Delete Game and Select. To start a '''New game''', press the ''New'' button at the ''Game Details'' window. This will open a much larger window, titled "Create New Game", with an editable list of various parameters for the new universe generation process. This may seem a little overwhelming at first but most of the standard options are already selected by default, and a detailed reference with advice is provided below.
  
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=New Game Creation=
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You can return to this screen in an ongoing game by selecting "Game Info" in the main menu bar, then change the game parameters. Click "Save" to save them (when asked for the SM password: by default it's empty, so just click "OK").
  
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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.
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==Parameters==
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# You are asked for a starting year. Type in the year your campaign starts at and click OK.
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The parameters are described below in the order that they appear in the UI.
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# 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 [[#Alternate Startup]] for creating a new system/race.
 
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# Next you need to enter in the number of jump points for the Sol system. We'll enter in 3.
 
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# 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.
 
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# A suggested species name of 'Terran' is given. You are asked if you wish to change this. We'll click No.
 
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# Next is the suggested maximum deviation in oxygen pressure. In this example it is 45%. We'll leave it at that.
 
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# Next is the suggested maximum atmospheric pressure. In this example it is 2.9. We'll leave this alone too.
 
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# Next is the suggested maximum temperature deviation. In this example it is 23 degrees (Celsius). We'll tweak this to 30 degrees.
 
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# Next is the suggested maximum gravity deviation. In this example it is 60%. We'll leave this alone.
 
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# 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'.
 
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# Next is the theme. The game has suggested Italia. We'll change that to USA.
 
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# Next is the government type. The default is Player Race. We'll leave this alone.
 
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# The default commander name theme is USA. We'll leave this too.
 
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# Now we are asked if we wish the race to have surveyed the home system for jump points. We'll say yes.
 
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# Next is the suggested population. In this example it is 265m. We'll change this to 750m.
 
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# Next we get a warning that it may take a bit for large populations.
 
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# We get asked if we wish less industry than normal. We'll say no.
 
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# We get asked if we wish to convert ordnance factories to construction factories. We'll say no.
 
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# We get asked if we wish to convert fighter factories to construction factories. We'll say yes.
 
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# We are asked if we wish to set a name for the homeworld. We'll say no.
 
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# Next we are asked about starting research points. In this example we have 180,000. We'll increase this to 250,000.
 
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# Now we are asked if we wish random distribution of the points. We'll say yes.
 
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# The game now goes through the creation process and you will get a notification that the process is complete.
 
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# 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.
 
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# Now we are at the main screen.
 
  
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=Alternate startup=
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{{screenshot|[[File:Createnewgame.jpg]]}}
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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.
 
  
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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.
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* '''Game Name''' is the name you want to give this game and is what displays in the dropdown in the Game Details dialog. Perhaps "My First Game", or maybe "My First Rampage Through the Galaxy", depending on your style.
  
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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.
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* '''SpaceMaster Password:''' Set password in order to be able to use [[SpaceMaster Mode|SpaceMaster]] interfaces, case-sensitive. Leave the Password blank as that is really for refereed multi-player games.
  
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Now, we need to create a system for our new empire. Hit the F9 key, or Empires/System View.
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===Basic Parameters===
  
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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.
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* '''Starting Year:''' This is the starting date where your game starts. Set any number you like. Aurora keeps track of time using years, months, days and seconds. You will start at 00:00 on January 1st of whatever year you select. (Starting year must be a positive integer of 1 or greater)
  
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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.
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* '''Maximum Number of Systems:''' This isn't really the max number of systems that you can have in your universe as it can be changed at any time during the game. In effect, this controls the highest system number that will be generated by the program in a random (not 'Real Stars') universe. Small numbers of systems means more chance of races being close together. So if you want a knife fight in a phone booth you can choose a low number of systems and if you want a slow leisurely build up before the carnage begins you can choose a high number. 1000 is in the middle of the range and is a reasonable number for a starting game. '''Note''': Does not apply to [[#Real Star Systems|Real Star Systems]].
  
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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.
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* '''Local System Generation Chance''' and '''Local System Generation Spread''': determines how much 'clustering' there is in a random game. This is something you don't need to worry about yet so you can skip this paragraph if you like. Still here? Well here we go then. In a 1000 system game, the program will select a number from 1-1000 when generating a new system. If the Local System Generation Chance is 50% then there is a 50% chance that instead the program will pick a number close to that of the current system. Just how close depends on the Local System Generation Spread. If your current system is number 100 and the Local System Generation Spread is 15, then if a local system is selected it will be between 85 and 115. Why does this make a difference? Well, if you pick a system that already exists when entering a jump point, you will create a link to a new system. If every system was generated randomly from 1-1000, the galactic map will probably comprise a large number of independent chains of systems stretching out form your start point. If the number range selected is small then there is a lot more chance of encountering nearby systems so you generate a far more inter-connected universe with a lot of connections between chains and loops of systems. '''Note''': Does not apply to [[#Real Star Systems|Real Star Systems]].
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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.
 
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Next question is about Suggested Maximum Atmospheric Pressure. Again, we will take the default.
 
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Next is the Suggested Maximum Temperature Deviation. This value is in Celsius. We'll take the default value here too.
 
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Next we are asked about the Suggested Maximum Gravity Deviation. We will accept the default value here also.
 
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Next, we are presented with the suggested Empire name of Adobreny Empire. This sounds good, so we will accept it.
 
  
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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.
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* '''Difficulty Modifier:''' The modifier is applied to starting size for NPR populations, NPR research rates and NPR growth rates. 100% is for normal setting. 90% easier. 110% harder.
  
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Before continuing on to the next tutorial, be sure to select your new empire as the default race.
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* '''Construction Cycle Time:''' You get to build a lot of things in different things in Aurora and the actual construction takes place in what is commonly referred to as the [[Time, Turns and Interrupts|5-day increment]]. It would affect performance if Aurora updated construction times in every 5 second increment or sub-pulse so instead the game waits until an number of increments have passed that add up to about five days and then runs all the construction code after the normal movement/detection/combat phases. Because Aurora increments rarely add up to exactly five days between construction cycles, the program uses the actual amount of time that has passed, whether it is 5 days, 12 days or 6 days, 14 hours, 12 minutes and 45 seconds. This means that the amount of 'construction' carried out in each construction cycle may vary a little between cycles. You can choose to change the trigger time for a construction cycle from the standard 400,000 seconds if you want it to happen more or less often but I would suggest leaving it alone until you have a lot more experience with the game. See [[Basic Sequence of Play]] for a list of some of the things that happen during a construction cycle.
  
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=Technology Setup=
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* '''The Non-player Race Generation Chance:''' is the chance that an alien empire will be created if an eligible world is created during system generation. Eligible worlds are not that common but 30% is probably reasonable for your first game. A world may still be eligible even if it appears to be uninhabitable to your species.
  
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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.
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* '''The Non-player race Population Modifier:''' is a difficulty modifier. The size of a new alien homeworld population is generated on a bell curve with the midpoint being equal to the average player race total population. If you change this value to less than 100 the midpoint of the bell curve will move below the average player race population. If you increase, the midpoint will be higher than the average player race population. This method of alien race generation also means that you can choose any starting population size and the game will scale appropriately
  
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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.  
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* '''Minimum Comets per System:''' If you really like [[comet]]s, you can set a minimum number per system. 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 . Short period comets are much better for mining or you can make hay while the sun shines if a long period comet happens to be in the inner system for a while.
  
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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.  
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===Setting Empire Parameters===
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These are all flavor options that only apply if "Generate Sol System and create starting Empire on Earth" is selected in the Starting Race section.
  
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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.  
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* '''Empire Title''', '''Species Name''' and '''Homeworld Name''' are just text entry fields so you can be as imaginative as you like, or just leave the standard 'Terran Federation', 'Human' and 'Earth' entries.
  
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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.  
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* '''[[Government Types|Government Type]]:''' allows a descriptive name for your form of government, which has minor in-game effects. It sets some modifiers for Empire characteristics, such as Xenophobia, Militancy, Determination, etc. and also alters the starting population ratio of population to shipyards and research facilities for your homeworld.
  
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At the bottom, you should see 8 buttons labeled Research, Design, Instant, Turrets, Instant RST, Fighters, Delete, Missiles. Click Design.  
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* '''[[Main Empire Theme]] and [[Commander Theme]]:''' are basically flavor name-sets built in to the game. Your starting ranks, random system names and auto-generated names for ship classes will be based on the Main Empire Theme, while the names of [[leaders|Commander]] come from the Commander Theme. All names can be overridden during the games if you prefer something else and you can change theme mid-game to an extent in the race menu {{key|Ctrl+F2}}.  
  
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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.  
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The final part of this section is an option between a ''Trans-Newtonian Empire and a Conventional Empire''. Stick with Trans-Newtonian for now, which is a standard Aurora Empire. A Conventional Empire starts with no space-age tech and you have to pretty much start from scratch, converting your conventional industry and researching all of the normal basic starting tech. This would be frustrating for a new player.
  
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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.  
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If one does choose a Conventional Start, be advised that ICBM bases will offer you no real protection from alien races, but will provide some training opportunities for new academy grads. They will also afford a "feeling of safety" that satisfies the requested [[Protection Level]] of your home world and appears as actual protection level.
  
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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.
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===Species Tolerance===
  
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=Homeworld Setup=
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These parameters control your [[species]] environmental tolerances. Each species has environmental tolerances with their midpoint being their homeworld. The habitability of planets will vary considerably depending on the species tolerances so a world that is ideal for humans may be uninhabitable for some other species and vice versa. Even humans can be set with varying tolerances that can affect the difficulty of the game. Generally the higher the deviation is, the greater will be the number of planets that which falls within your habitable range.
  
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In this part, we will concentrate on setting up shipyards, assigning commanders, creating our initial Order of Battle (OOB), and setting up the research queue.  
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For Example, setting the maximum deviation in oxygen pressure to 50%, the max deviation in gravity to 70%, the max deviation in temperature to 22 and the max atmospheric pressure to 4. These settings will mean that an ideal habitable world will have a temperature between 0 and 44C, an oxygen pressure between 0.1 and 0.3 atm, a gravity between 0.3G and 1.7G and a maximum atmospheric pressure of 4.0 atm. In addition to the individual species tolerances, the ideal habitable world will also need to have no dangerous gases such as Chlorine and will need the oxygen to be no more than 30% of the total atmospheric pressure. A planet that doesn't meet those criteria may be uninhabitable (if it falls outside the gravity range) or may require infrastructure to support the population. Note that 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.
  
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First, let's set up our shipyards. Click the 'Manage Shipyards' tab. The Confederation has 7 yards. They are summarized below.
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===Starting Population===
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*1 2 slipways, 4000 ton capacity
 
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*2 3 slipways, 7000 ton capacity
 
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*3 3 slipways, 7000 ton capacity
 
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*4 2 slipways, 9000 ton capacity
 
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*5 1 slipway, 5000 ton capacity
 
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*6 1 slipway, 4000 ton capacity
 
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*7 2 slipways, 9000 ton capacity
 
  
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We'll assign classes as follows. To assign a class, select the yard, then select the Task Type droplist. Select Retool. This will show the ship class drop list and activate the Set Start Class button.  
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Starting Population section lays out the parameters for your initial population on Earth. Somewhere between 500m and 1000m is a good amount for a new player. Lets leave it at 500m for now. The other boxes can be left alone as they are mainly for specialized scenarios. For example, you might set the Wealth Creation Rate and Industrial Percentage fields to be very low (perhaps 15-20%) to simulate a country like China that has a lot of population but a much lower per capita industrial output and per capita income than the USA. In games that feature multiple starting Empires on Earth this can be an important balancing factor for the SpaceMaster.
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*1 Since this yard has 2 slipways, we'll assign the Lexington to it.  
 
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*2 We'll need one of our 7000 ton yards for the survey ships. Since both have 3 slipways, Yard 2 gets it.
 
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*3 This yard gets the Spruance.
 
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*4 This is one of our big capacity yards we?ll need these for the civilian freighters/colonizers and the flag ship cruisers. Yard 4 gets the civilian ships.
 
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*5 This yard will get the Coontz scout.
 
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*6 Yard 6 we will leave unassigned for the moment.
 
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*7 Yard 7 gets the Enterprise flagship.  
 
  
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From this screen you can assign tasks to the shipyard (increasing slipways, increasing capacity, retooling to a new class). You can also assign construction tasks here. These tasks will be displayed on the 'Shipyard Tasks' tab.
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===Starting System===
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For the moment, we decide we want all the shipyards to have 3 slipways. So we assign the ''Add Extra Slipway'' task to yards 1, 4, 5, 6, & 7. Yards 2 and 3 are fine for now how they are.
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Sol Jump Points
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After we've done this, we see that the smaller yards, 1 & 6 will finish in 2252, the medium yard 5 in 2253, and the large yards 4 & 7 in 2255.  
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* '''Sol Jump Points:''' specifies the number of [[Jump point]]s out of the home-system and thus its defensibility and access to neighboring star systems. Setting the number to 0 will generating random value.
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We don't add any construction tasks as we will be using the Fast OOB to add our initial ships.  
 
  
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From the main bar, click the SpaceMaster Menu, and select Fast OOB. This small window shows us our Empire, Species, Task Group and Class. We decide we want 10 civilian ships, 5 each Fletcher and Ark to go into the Cargo and Colony groups respectively. So we select the Colony task group from the list, type 5 in the Number box and click Add. The same procedure is used to add our Fletchers and our combat ships as well as the survey ships.
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* '''System Body survey completed''' and '''Jump points survey completed''': Allow the player to start with full [[Geological Survey|geological knowledge‎]] of the bodies in the starting system, as well as knowledge of the location of all jump points.  
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Our Task Groups end up with the following.  
 
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'''Battle Group'''
 
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2x Enterprise CA
 
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8x Spruance DE
 
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8x Lexington FFG
 
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4x Coontz SF
 
  
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'''Cargo Group'''
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===Starting Tech===
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5x Fletcher FT
 
  
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'''Colony Group'''  
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Allow to set the Empire's starting tech direction by assigning a number of tech points. The number of allocated points is based on Government Type and Trans-Newtonian Empire vs. Conventional Empire. '''Assign starting tech points automatically''' allows the user to automatically use the starting tech points to research tech, instead of manually specifying them once the game starts using SpaceMaster mode. That can be fun if you want to create a more challenging start where you have to cope with whatever tech you are given. '''Create ship systems and ship designs''' uses the AI ship design routines to come up with some pre-designed ships and systems for the player, to jump start the game a bit, and is only enabled if the former box is checked (and therefore there exists tech to base designs on).
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5x Ark CS
 
  
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'''Survey Group'''
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===Starting Race===
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5x Stellar SS
 
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5x Geode SS
 
  
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'''Shipyard Group'''  
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You can chose to either '''Generate Sol System''' and starting human empire on Earth, the Default setting and recommended for most players; or '''Create SpaceMaster Empire''' so you can creates a game with a blank race, intending you to use SpaceMaster mode to set up the race's initial conditions, it is a LOT more complex and not recommended to new players. See [[create a custom race]] for more details.
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4x North Carolina PDC
 
  
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Looking at this, we decide to create a Terra Ground Group for the PDCs and create a Geo Survey Group for the Geodes. We do this by hitting F12, which brings up the Task Group window. Here is where we assign orders and control our ships. We start by clicking the New TG button twice. This creates Task Groups #426 & 427. We select 426 and click the Rename TG button, renaming it Geo Survey. 427 becomes the Ground Command.
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===Non-NPR Computer Opponents===
  
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Now we need to move ships into these groups. We select the Survey Task Group and click the Organization tab. In the far right droplist, we select the new Geo Survey group. We add ships by selecting them (in this case the Geodes) and clicking the right-facing arrow button. The same procedure is used to move the PDCs to the Ground Command.  
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These are special empires that may show up in the game if enabled to give the player extra challenge.  
  
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Next we'll set up some default orders. Under Conditional A, for all fleets we set the condition to "Current Speed Not Equal to Max" and the order to "Change to Maximum Speed".  
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Precursors: Ancient robot controlled ships, usually found guarding alien ruins. Dangerous.
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The only other fleet we want to set default orders for are the two survey fleets. Select the Geo Group, and set the Primary Default to "Survey Nearest Planet or Moon". For the Grav fleet, set the Primary to "Survey Next Three System Locations". For both fleets, we will issue orders to Transit Jump Point #1. Select Jump Point #1 (Unexplored) from the locations list. Then double-click the Transit order in the Actions list.  
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Extra-Galactic Invaders: Destroyed the original Precursor civilization during their last incursion. Extremely Dangerous.
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Star Swarm. An alien species of living ships that reproduce in space. Individually weak bt troublesome in numbers.
  
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The Battle group we need to have rearm. Click Earth in locations, and double-click Load Ordnance from actions.
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===Non-Player Races (NPR)===
  
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If you recall we wanted to move some automated mines to Mercury and Venus. Select the Cargo group. Click Earth in Locations and double-click Load Automated Mine in actions. Now click Mercury in Locations and Unload Automated Mines in Actions. Click Earth again and Load Automated Mines. Now click Venus and unload them. With our cargo ship design and the number in the fleet, they will transfer 5 mines per load/unload. We wanted to move 60 to Mercury and 60 to Venus. So we need to do our order another 11 times to move them all. Under the Plotted move list you should see a "Repeat" button. In the box next to it, change the number to 11 and click Repeat. For clean up purposes, click Earth and select the Refuel and Freighter Maintenance Check orders. This should keep our Cargo fleet busy for a bit.  
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The first two options allow the creation of [[NPR|non-player races]] at game start. These races are created at a comparable population and therefore industrial and tech level to the player (depending on the Difficulty Modifier). The third option lets the player specify whether the races generated when a new system is created will be NPRs or visible to the spacemaster and therefore modifiable by the player.  
  
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Now we want to assign commanders to various posts. In the upper left corner, in the Empire section, you will see a check box labeled ?Automated Assignments? along with a drop list labeled "Tour Length". I suggest checking the box. This will rotate your commanders into new slots (and assign commanders to new construction) automatically every (by default) 24 months. The only slots not rotated this way are governorships and Task Force commands. TF staff commands are rotated.  
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Leave the number of computer-controlled Empires (NPRs) as 1 and leave the two checkboxes in the section checked. One NPR is plenty for a starting game as new ones will be generated as the game progresses and new systems are found. An NPR is an Empire much like your own. It will be exploring the galaxy, encountering and fighting Precursors, setting up new colonies and improving its industry. When you finally encounter an NPR it may turn out to be friendly, depending on how diplomacy progresses, or it may be an implacable foe. Or it may change from one to the other at some point.
  
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To do this, hit the F4 button. This brings up our commanders. We have more slots than commanders, but we'll do the best we can. Click the Admiral rank. Our Admiral is named Sandy Bowsher. Admiral Bowsher is about to be assigned to the Governorship of Earth. Click her and you'll see a list of potential assignments. Click R6 Governor of Earth. And click the Assign button in the lower right corner. Admiral Bowsher is now the Governor of Earth and her bonuses (listed in the upper right corner) apply to Earth.
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===Optional Simplifications===
  
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You should see a list of ship commands and Task Force command. Let's get our survey ships commanded. On the right side, you will see the "Search by Ability or Location". In Ability A, select Survey Bonus. I got lucky with 10 commanders with this bonus. I'll select the first, and assign him to Geode 001. I'll repeat the process with each commander to a new ship.  
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* '''No Overhauls''' Ships will not require maintenance failures and will not require overhauls. See [[Ship Maintenance]].
 +
* '''Jump Gates on all Jump Points''' When using this option, all [[jump point]]s will have [[Jump Gate]]s, which means that jump ships are unnecessary and all ships will be able to transit all jump points.
  
−
You can assign your other officers to your ships as you see fit. One word about Task Forces. The officer you place in there sets the maximum rank for his staff officers. If you place a Commodore in the slot, only Captains and Commanders will be eligible. Once you have assigned all the officers you want, close this window. You may find you have more slots than officers to fill them. This happens. Just wait a couple months game time, and you will have more officers.  
+
===Commanders===
 +
These are "realism" options for dealing with our space and ground force officers.
  
−
Now, you will recall we gave our Battle Group an order to reload ordnance. Click the Industrial Production tab. You'll notice in the upper right corner, our existing planetary stock of missiles. Along that top row, you will also see our Ordnance factories, and the production queue. Add 1000 of each missile type by selecting the missile, changing the amount to 1000, and click "Add to Stocks". Now our fleet will have sufficient stocks to draw from.  
+
* '''Realistic Commanders Promotions:''' This option will allow Aurora to look after the promotions within your officers corps, basing them on skills, medals, and time in grade.
  
−
At the bottom of this screen, you will also see our regular construction queue. One of the first things we will want is a Sector HQ. Scroll through the list for Sector Command. If you cannot find it, you will need to research Improved Command and Control first. This is our case. So we will load up the queue with some infrastructure for when we start off world colonies. We add 10000 infrastructure to the queue.  
+
* '''Commander Political Bonuses:''' When using realistic promotions officers are promoted based on their skill. If this option is in use, those skills include a 'political bonus' which has no other use. This simulates the rise of those officers who rely on political connections rather than ability.
  
−
Click the Research tab. First thing we do is find Improved Command and Control in the General Science category. We select it and click Research. This starts our scientist to work on this project. Now we have some decisions on what to build. We like the idea of a small (2000 ton) parasite survey ship. But to do that we'll need some new technology. Under Ship Components, we select Small Craft crew quarters and click the Queue button to the middle right. What this does is set the labs to researching this project once they've finished their current one without any involvement on our part. We also add in improved capacitor tech and beam fire control.  
+
Leave ''Realistic Commander Promotions'' on as it is one thing less to worry about and it does provide a good flavour to the Commander system. Turn off the Political Bonuses option as it adds an unnecessary complication for new players.
  
−
If you went through Tutorial 1a instead of 1, you may not have Jump Point Theory. Without this, you cannot create jump drives, nor use gravitational survey instruments.
+
===Inexperienced Fleets===
  
−
The last thing we want to do is create some ground units to place in our PDCs. Each PDC can garrison 5 battalions. We've got 4 PDCs, so we create 4 HQ units, and 16 Garrison units. This is accomplished on the GU Training tab. Normally, (in our case), we could train 7 units at a time. As part of our "pre-existing" infrastructure, we'll create the units without training them. Select the unit type, and click the "Add Units" button. We are asked how many divisions we wish to create. As we selected HQ, we enter 4. We repeat the process with the Garrison type.  
+
Inexperienced Fleet Penalty requires that task forces and ships spend time [[Fleet Training|training]] to work together or there maybe shaky [[formation]] keeping and a delay in responding to orders.  
  
−
Click on the Ground Unit tab. You'll see the troops we just created. You can assign them to the PDC by selecting the unit, and the location from the droplist at the bottom. We assign our units to all of the PDCs. If you try to exceed the capacity of the PDC, the game will not let you.  
+
Its recommended to leave it on. You can turn it off later if you wish but the need to institute fleet training exercises adds a good degree of realism to the game. If you are a beginner then you should probably turn this off until you are ready to play a longer game. If you leave it on, you will need to train a fleet together for some time to get coordinated fire, and maneuver. This is very important for missile combat.
  
−
At this point, we?ve started a basic queue for production and research. We've assigned our commanders. We've issued orders to our task groups. All that is left is to start time moving forward. To increment time, there is a number of ways. My preferred setup is having the Economic window and the Event window open. This shows me what is going on, and allows me to issue orders to my planets. Unless something is occurring, I increment in 5 day periods.
+
===Known Star Systems===
 +
 
 +
Known Star Systems (formerly named "Real Stars") uses a gigantic database of real stars to generate the galactic map. This includes star names, spectral types, and the orbital distances of the constituent stellar bodies. Planets and other bodies are randomly generated based on the spectral type. [jump point|Jump Points]] links to other systems are loosely based on real world star positions.
 +
 
 +
Set on by default, which takes care of system naming and adds some familiarity to the universe. Set it off adds a bit of randomness and special system types like [[Nebulae]]s and [[Black Holes]].
 +
 
 +
===Orbital Motion===
 +
See [[Galaxy]] to learn about Orbital Motion. Having all planets, moons and asteroids rotate around the sun consumes some CPU power in larger galaxies. It is recommended to leave it on. If you have a modern PC, you can turn on Orbital Motion for Asteroids as well.
 +
 
 +
* '''Orbital Motion for Planets and Moons:''' Check this box if you want Planets to orbit their stars and moons to orbit planets.
 +
* '''Orbital Motion for Asteroids:''' Check this box if you want Asteroids to orbit their parent stars.
 +
 
 +
===Same System Truce===
 +
The minimum time in years fo which NPRs will maintain a truce against a race who share the same system capital.
 +
 
 +
===Generate Non-TN races===
 +
Ticking this box will create a game where all NPRs stays non-TN forever.
 +
 
 +
===No Overhauls===
 +
 
 +
===NPRs activate Non-NPRs===
 +
 
 +
==Create Game==
 +
Aha - the Moment of Truth! When you are ready click ''Create Game''. This will take a minute or two and there will be a couple of popup messages. When all that is complete you will be back at the Game Details window with your new game selected. Press Enter to select the game and you will be at the main menu bar. Press F3 for the [[System Map]].
 +
 
 +
==Notes==
 +
* See also [[Quickstart for Beginners]]
 +
* This page was originally copied from the ''[http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=1952.0 Part 1: Setting up a New Game]'' tutorial by [[Steve Walmsley]].
 +
 
 +
[[Category:Interface]]

Latest revision as of 23:05, 9 December 2021

Warning: Obsolete Information
This page concerns the VB6 version of the game (last released December 27, 2015). It has been superseded by a version written in C#, referred to as Aurora C# or C# Aurora, which can be found on the community forums or the main page of this wiki. The latest version of Aurora is 2.5.0 C#. Some information may still be accurate, but use it at your own risk.

You may be able to find current information at CS Aurora:New Game.

"New Game Setup"
New Game Setup

When you start Aurora, the first thing you should see is a small window with Game Details in the title bar. Across the bottom are four buttons: New, Save, Delete Game and Select. To start a New game, press the New button at the Game Details window. This will open a much larger window, titled "Create New Game", with an editable list of various parameters for the new universe generation process. This may seem a little overwhelming at first but most of the standard options are already selected by default, and a detailed reference with advice is provided below.

You can return to this screen in an ongoing game by selecting "Game Info" in the main menu bar, then change the game parameters. Click "Save" to save them (when asked for the SM password: by default it's empty, so just click "OK").

Parameters

The parameters are described below in the order that they appear in the UI.

Toggle Screenshot
Createnewgame.jpg
  • Game Name is the name you want to give this game and is what displays in the dropdown in the Game Details dialog. Perhaps "My First Game", or maybe "My First Rampage Through the Galaxy", depending on your style.
  • SpaceMaster Password: Set password in order to be able to use SpaceMaster interfaces, case-sensitive. Leave the Password blank as that is really for refereed multi-player games.

Basic Parameters

  • Starting Year: This is the starting date where your game starts. Set any number you like. Aurora keeps track of time using years, months, days and seconds. You will start at 00:00 on January 1st of whatever year you select. (Starting year must be a positive integer of 1 or greater)
  • Maximum Number of Systems: This isn't really the max number of systems that you can have in your universe as it can be changed at any time during the game. In effect, this controls the highest system number that will be generated by the program in a random (not 'Real Stars') universe. Small numbers of systems means more chance of races being close together. So if you want a knife fight in a phone booth you can choose a low number of systems and if you want a slow leisurely build up before the carnage begins you can choose a high number. 1000 is in the middle of the range and is a reasonable number for a starting game. Note: Does not apply to Real Star Systems.
  • Local System Generation Chance and Local System Generation Spread: determines how much 'clustering' there is in a random game. This is something you don't need to worry about yet so you can skip this paragraph if you like. Still here? Well here we go then. In a 1000 system game, the program will select a number from 1-1000 when generating a new system. If the Local System Generation Chance is 50% then there is a 50% chance that instead the program will pick a number close to that of the current system. Just how close depends on the Local System Generation Spread. If your current system is number 100 and the Local System Generation Spread is 15, then if a local system is selected it will be between 85 and 115. Why does this make a difference? Well, if you pick a system that already exists when entering a jump point, you will create a link to a new system. If every system was generated randomly from 1-1000, the galactic map will probably comprise a large number of independent chains of systems stretching out form your start point. If the number range selected is small then there is a lot more chance of encountering nearby systems so you generate a far more inter-connected universe with a lot of connections between chains and loops of systems. Note: Does not apply to Real Star Systems.
  • Difficulty Modifier: The modifier is applied to starting size for NPR populations, NPR research rates and NPR growth rates. 100% is for normal setting. 90% easier. 110% harder.
  • Construction Cycle Time: You get to build a lot of things in different things in Aurora and the actual construction takes place in what is commonly referred to as the 5-day increment. It would affect performance if Aurora updated construction times in every 5 second increment or sub-pulse so instead the game waits until an number of increments have passed that add up to about five days and then runs all the construction code after the normal movement/detection/combat phases. Because Aurora increments rarely add up to exactly five days between construction cycles, the program uses the actual amount of time that has passed, whether it is 5 days, 12 days or 6 days, 14 hours, 12 minutes and 45 seconds. This means that the amount of 'construction' carried out in each construction cycle may vary a little between cycles. You can choose to change the trigger time for a construction cycle from the standard 400,000 seconds if you want it to happen more or less often but I would suggest leaving it alone until you have a lot more experience with the game. See Basic Sequence of Play for a list of some of the things that happen during a construction cycle.
  • The Non-player Race Generation Chance: is the chance that an alien empire will be created if an eligible world is created during system generation. Eligible worlds are not that common but 30% is probably reasonable for your first game. A world may still be eligible even if it appears to be uninhabitable to your species.
  • The Non-player race Population Modifier: is a difficulty modifier. The size of a new alien homeworld population is generated on a bell curve with the midpoint being equal to the average player race total population. If you change this value to less than 100 the midpoint of the bell curve will move below the average player race population. If you increase, the midpoint will be higher than the average player race population. This method of alien race generation also means that you can choose any starting population size and the game will scale appropriately
  • Minimum Comets per System: If you really like comets, you can set a minimum number per system. 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 . Short period comets are much better for mining or you can make hay while the sun shines if a long period comet happens to be in the inner system for a while.

Setting Empire Parameters

These are all flavor options that only apply if "Generate Sol System and create starting Empire on Earth" is selected in the Starting Race section.

  • Empire Title, Species Name and Homeworld Name are just text entry fields so you can be as imaginative as you like, or just leave the standard 'Terran Federation', 'Human' and 'Earth' entries.
  • Government Type: allows a descriptive name for your form of government, which has minor in-game effects. It sets some modifiers for Empire characteristics, such as Xenophobia, Militancy, Determination, etc. and also alters the starting population ratio of population to shipyards and research facilities for your homeworld.
  • Main Empire Theme and Commander Theme: are basically flavor name-sets built in to the game. Your starting ranks, random system names and auto-generated names for ship classes will be based on the Main Empire Theme, while the names of Commander come from the Commander Theme. All names can be overridden during the games if you prefer something else and you can change theme mid-game to an extent in the race menu Ctrl+F2.

The final part of this section is an option between a Trans-Newtonian Empire and a Conventional Empire. Stick with Trans-Newtonian for now, which is a standard Aurora Empire. A Conventional Empire starts with no space-age tech and you have to pretty much start from scratch, converting your conventional industry and researching all of the normal basic starting tech. This would be frustrating for a new player.

If one does choose a Conventional Start, be advised that ICBM bases will offer you no real protection from alien races, but will provide some training opportunities for new academy grads. They will also afford a "feeling of safety" that satisfies the requested Protection Level of your home world and appears as actual protection level.

Species Tolerance

These parameters control your species environmental tolerances. Each species has environmental tolerances with their midpoint being their homeworld. The habitability of planets will vary considerably depending on the species tolerances so a world that is ideal for humans may be uninhabitable for some other species and vice versa. Even humans can be set with varying tolerances that can affect the difficulty of the game. Generally the higher the deviation is, the greater will be the number of planets that which falls within your habitable range.

For Example, setting the maximum deviation in oxygen pressure to 50%, the max deviation in gravity to 70%, the max deviation in temperature to 22 and the max atmospheric pressure to 4. These settings will mean that an ideal habitable world will have a temperature between 0 and 44C, an oxygen pressure between 0.1 and 0.3 atm, a gravity between 0.3G and 1.7G and a maximum atmospheric pressure of 4.0 atm. In addition to the individual species tolerances, the ideal habitable world will also need to have no dangerous gases such as Chlorine and will need the oxygen to be no more than 30% of the total atmospheric pressure. A planet that doesn't meet those criteria may be uninhabitable (if it falls outside the gravity range) or may require infrastructure to support the population. Note that 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.

Starting Population

Starting Population section lays out the parameters for your initial population on Earth. Somewhere between 500m and 1000m is a good amount for a new player. Lets leave it at 500m for now. The other boxes can be left alone as they are mainly for specialized scenarios. For example, you might set the Wealth Creation Rate and Industrial Percentage fields to be very low (perhaps 15-20%) to simulate a country like China that has a lot of population but a much lower per capita industrial output and per capita income than the USA. In games that feature multiple starting Empires on Earth this can be an important balancing factor for the SpaceMaster.

Starting System

Sol Jump Points

  • Sol Jump Points: specifies the number of Jump points out of the home-system and thus its defensibility and access to neighboring star systems. Setting the number to 0 will generating random value.
  • System Body survey completed and Jump points survey completed: Allow the player to start with full geological knowledge‎ of the bodies in the starting system, as well as knowledge of the location of all jump points.

Starting Tech

Allow to set the Empire's starting tech direction by assigning a number of tech points. The number of allocated points is based on Government Type and Trans-Newtonian Empire vs. Conventional Empire. Assign starting tech points automatically allows the user to automatically use the starting tech points to research tech, instead of manually specifying them once the game starts using SpaceMaster mode. That can be fun if you want to create a more challenging start where you have to cope with whatever tech you are given. Create ship systems and ship designs uses the AI ship design routines to come up with some pre-designed ships and systems for the player, to jump start the game a bit, and is only enabled if the former box is checked (and therefore there exists tech to base designs on).

Starting Race

You can chose to either Generate Sol System and starting human empire on Earth, the Default setting and recommended for most players; or Create SpaceMaster Empire so you can creates a game with a blank race, intending you to use SpaceMaster mode to set up the race's initial conditions, it is a LOT more complex and not recommended to new players. See create a custom race for more details.

Non-NPR Computer Opponents

These are special empires that may show up in the game if enabled to give the player extra challenge.

Precursors: Ancient robot controlled ships, usually found guarding alien ruins. Dangerous. Extra-Galactic Invaders: Destroyed the original Precursor civilization during their last incursion. Extremely Dangerous. Star Swarm. An alien species of living ships that reproduce in space. Individually weak bt troublesome in numbers.

Non-Player Races (NPR)

The first two options allow the creation of non-player races at game start. These races are created at a comparable population and therefore industrial and tech level to the player (depending on the Difficulty Modifier). The third option lets the player specify whether the races generated when a new system is created will be NPRs or visible to the spacemaster and therefore modifiable by the player.

Leave the number of computer-controlled Empires (NPRs) as 1 and leave the two checkboxes in the section checked. One NPR is plenty for a starting game as new ones will be generated as the game progresses and new systems are found. An NPR is an Empire much like your own. It will be exploring the galaxy, encountering and fighting Precursors, setting up new colonies and improving its industry. When you finally encounter an NPR it may turn out to be friendly, depending on how diplomacy progresses, or it may be an implacable foe. Or it may change from one to the other at some point.

Optional Simplifications

  • No Overhauls Ships will not require maintenance failures and will not require overhauls. See Ship Maintenance.
  • Jump Gates on all Jump Points When using this option, all jump points will have Jump Gates, which means that jump ships are unnecessary and all ships will be able to transit all jump points.

Commanders

These are "realism" options for dealing with our space and ground force officers.

  • Realistic Commanders Promotions: This option will allow Aurora to look after the promotions within your officers corps, basing them on skills, medals, and time in grade.
  • Commander Political Bonuses: When using realistic promotions officers are promoted based on their skill. If this option is in use, those skills include a 'political bonus' which has no other use. This simulates the rise of those officers who rely on political connections rather than ability.

Leave Realistic Commander Promotions on as it is one thing less to worry about and it does provide a good flavour to the Commander system. Turn off the Political Bonuses option as it adds an unnecessary complication for new players.

Inexperienced Fleets

Inexperienced Fleet Penalty requires that task forces and ships spend time training to work together or there maybe shaky formation keeping and a delay in responding to orders.

Its recommended to leave it on. You can turn it off later if you wish but the need to institute fleet training exercises adds a good degree of realism to the game. If you are a beginner then you should probably turn this off until you are ready to play a longer game. If you leave it on, you will need to train a fleet together for some time to get coordinated fire, and maneuver. This is very important for missile combat.

Known Star Systems

Known Star Systems (formerly named "Real Stars") uses a gigantic database of real stars to generate the galactic map. This includes star names, spectral types, and the orbital distances of the constituent stellar bodies. Planets and other bodies are randomly generated based on the spectral type. [jump point|Jump Points]] links to other systems are loosely based on real world star positions.

Set on by default, which takes care of system naming and adds some familiarity to the universe. Set it off adds a bit of randomness and special system types like Nebulaes and Black Holes.

Orbital Motion

See Galaxy to learn about Orbital Motion. Having all planets, moons and asteroids rotate around the sun consumes some CPU power in larger galaxies. It is recommended to leave it on. If you have a modern PC, you can turn on Orbital Motion for Asteroids as well.

  • Orbital Motion for Planets and Moons: Check this box if you want Planets to orbit their stars and moons to orbit planets.
  • Orbital Motion for Asteroids: Check this box if you want Asteroids to orbit their parent stars.

Same System Truce

The minimum time in years fo which NPRs will maintain a truce against a race who share the same system capital.

Generate Non-TN races

Ticking this box will create a game where all NPRs stays non-TN forever.

No Overhauls

NPRs activate Non-NPRs

Create Game

Aha - the Moment of Truth! When you are ready click Create Game. This will take a minute or two and there will be a couple of popup messages. When all that is complete you will be back at the Game Details window with your new game selected. Press Enter to select the game and you will be at the main menu bar. Press F3 for the System Map.

Notes

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