Welcome to Part 2 of our playthrough of Aurora. Before we continue I think it best I tell you my long term goals for this playthrough.
Colonisation Efforts
As I said in the earlier post, I wish to colonise luna, which is the moon and Mars. That being said, the results of my geo surveys will inform my decision. There's no point setting up colonies unless there are valuable resources there. So we may end up colonising somewhere totally random. I also want to break out of the Sol system as quickly as possible. Extra-solar colonies are great because more resources, more citizens to tax, and triggers spawning our enemies quicker. IN one playthrough, I managed to have a planet with almost 70 million Duranium, and 25 million sorium which is huge. So we might end up getting lucky.
Naval Doctrine
Aurora's naval aspect is one of the areas where it shines. There are a vast many playstyles, but they can be broadly catigorised into 2 groups. Ships of the Line tactics, and Carrier doctrine. Ships of the Line rely on big beam fighters going up against enemy shipsand so on. These can do a pretty decent amount of damage if the tech is done properly, plus provide point defense against missiles. The disadvantage is early on they have to get somewhat close in order to fire their guns. Carrier doctrine relys on using aircraft carriers to swarm an an enemy fleet from a distance. They can either use beam fighters which are fighters that use stuff like microwaves, lasers, railguns etc, or missile fighters that fire a volley of missiles at an enemy ship. Carriers are pretty dynamic. You can do a hell of a lot more with a lot less versus beam battleships. That isn't to say that battleships are inferior or something, they're pretty useful and if properly well armored, they can be formidable opponents for your NPR's. So that is to say I'm going for a carrier based doctrine. There's also a third smaller category, and I don't really have a word for them. They're basically ships that carry missiles and then overwelm enemy fleets with them. Think missile fighters but increased by a factor of, IDK, a hundred in terms of the missile capacity while only increasing the size by a factor of 10. Ultimately using a mix of these schools of naval thoughts will be the path to victory. For example, I might use cruisers armed with lasers or railguns as escorts.
Extra ideas/long term projects
So a very important thing are jump gates. What they do is allow you to stabalise jump points to the point where any of your ships, and even later on civilian ships, can jump through the points without specialised equipment. That's huge and definitely a major goal for us when we start exploiting other worlds. My secondary goal is to build a network of service stations, as it were. Big space stations floating at critical locations like JP's filled to the brim with millions of litres of fuel. They'd also have thousands and thousands of MSP's so that ships can quickly stop off there and refuel and resupply without having to come back to earth or my major naval bases whenever I establish them.
What do we need for our goals?
So what do we need? For the carriers we'll need hangar bays researched since we already have boatbay under research. Another welcomed addition would be Primary Flight Control which allows us to assign an airgroup commander who applies their bonus to your fighters. Absolutely valuable. For the service stations, we'll need tractor beams in order to build tugs that'll be able to carry about the things. Ordnance Transfer Hub and Refueling Hub are critical. They allow you to refuel and resupply multiple ships at once, which is to say we'll be able to re-arm our fleets quickly. I already have both of them auto researched by the game apparently, so I don't have to but you, the reader should absolutely take note. On the note of quickly, we'll want greater rates of fuel transfer, and ordnance transfer. This quickens the rate in which you can refuel and resupply a ship. This is also useful for if we have to refuel the service stations.
Let's Get Back into it
Here we are. 1 year later. WE've researched Boatbays and Hangar Decks pushing one of our objectives out of the way. Active Grav Strength 16, and Thermal Sensitivity 8 have been researched allowing us to build much better scanners. In about 6 months we'll finish researching Tractor beams pushing yet another goal aside. Also within this year we'll be finished with jump point theory and EM sensitivity. Our population is rapidly growing and it'll be a matter of time until our industry is able to work at full capacity. The TL:DR is everything's going good for us. That being said though because of the game pauses and interruptions, I'd guess the aliens are getting busy. The game isn't restricting the time advancements to 5 seconds. IF it was, then that would suggest the aliens were fighting among themselves. But since its restricting the advancements to less than the requested 30 days I'm going to guess that they're discovering Jump points. Whether they're exploiting them or not is anyone's guess. There might be a chance of them on the horizon, so we should prepare for that.
When The Paranoia Kicks In...
Because of the risk of the aliens running around the galaxy, I want to provide some defenses to our home world colony. Let me introduce to you, the Ground Force Design window. Now when I first saw this screen I literally got a headache, but its not that hard once you get the hang of it. Right now I want to design STO's, or Surface to Orbit weapons. These are basically ground mounted cannons that'll fire at ships in orbit of your planets. Pretty damn useful and powerful if you have enough of them at your disposal. After all, they can't invade you if you manage to sink their entire fleet right? So open the ground force window, and navigate over to the unit design window and we'll begin.
Designing our STO
When you're in the Unit Design tab, tab over to the first list view right after the create button. This list view will allow you to choose the platform of your weapon. Be it a soldier marching along, to a heavy tank, and a static instilation. Each platform will allow you to add different weapons, armor and fulfil different roles. For our STO, we want to set it to Static.
The next list handles armor. Its pretty self-explanatory.
The following one deals with the role,, function and weaponry of the unit. In this case we want STO.
Tab over twice to the weapons listview. Choose the gun with the best range and accuracy. I've chosen the plasma cannons. It has a range of 150K KM,though its accuracy is a bit low but it should work for our needs and we're going to be building lots of these anyways.
Shift tab back to create/instant, and we're done.
Now in order for that to work you have to repeat that process, but instead of deeming it a STO< designate it as an HQ. Leave the default capacity, and check the avoid combat tab for now. Create and we should be ready.
Go to the formation template tab and create a new one. This section is a bit confusing to, but similar to the last. The first list view, if focused will allow you to add units to the list. When focused on the item, say your STO< shift tab to the editbox, enter how many of those you want, and tab to add units. Do the same for HQ, and we're done. I've decided on 2 Orbital cannons and 2 HQ's. I've found breaking them up into smaller units can allow you to get the same amount trained faster.
Training The Things
Like ships, you have to get them trained and organised. Go to the GU Training tab in the economics screen, tab over to your units, shift tab to create, and you're done. Wait a little and you'll have your very own Company B.
Back On The Main Path
Its now May month. We've completed EM Sensitivity 8 and I decided to go research Priamry Flight Control.
A month later and Tractor beams are a reality. We've knocked yet another objective off our list. I set that same sci to research Ordnance Transfer Rate 64 since I rather wanted greater MSP transfer for now than fuel transfer. Our visions are slowly coming to pass.
A big Oopsie On My Part, But Here's Where It Gets Interesting
So apparently in the month of April, my surveyers were built and I didn't notice it somehow, but anyways. With that being said its time to take flight!
Lets Discuss Standing Orders
Now for the first time we'll be discussing the Naval Management screen, (F4). From here you manage all your fleets, Admin Commands and look at your private shipping companies. You can give your ships manual orders, IE, go to Luna, survey it, then go to Mars and do the same, then Jupiter, then Neptune, then Murcury, then Venus, then Pluto, then Wolf Harrington, then, then, then, then... And when they run out of fuel you'll have to manually summon them back to Earth to refuel, and give them that set of instructions again, and repeat until you rage quit. Or do you? Standing orders, dear reader saves you the time and headache that comes with managing a star bound fleet. These allow you to issue specific orders for your fleets to carry out. Survey X amount of bodies, stablise JP's, ETC.
How Do We Issue Them?
Its quite simple. What we do is navigate to our fleet. In this case the Survey fleet, and tab over to the second tab control and focus it on the Standing orders tab. Just like you've seen before, it uses a list view. Once you're focused on the item the fleet will remember it nothing fancy required. The first 2 items are the main task of the fleet. The main objective or thing you want them to do. In this case, survey next 30 system bodies. The next 2 function like if statements if you're familiar with programming or scripting languages. IF X condition with a member of the fleet is met,: Then perform the order given in the last 2 lists. In this case, if fuel is less than 20% and the deployment time is exceeded, refuel from colony or hub, and refuel, resupply and overhall at colony respectively. Pretty simple to use system, and can save you a lot of headaches.
Let Me Introduce You To... The Bits Of Aurora That Requires Some Creativity
So far to this point I've shown you that Aurora is pretty accessible, if a bit difficult to grasp. Unfortunately, as it was made for a mostly sighted audience there are some bits of the UI that aren['t easily accessible to us. That's not to say they can't be accessed, they just require a little bit of creativity. All the work arounds I'll be discussing are NVDA specific. If you use JAWS, you can feel free to post the JAWS counterpart, and I'll gladly include it. The first little work around I'm going to show you allows us to get some information about our various fleets. Make sure you're focused on the fleet, and tab once to the fleet tab control. On the Desktop Layout, you use NVDA+Backspace to move focus to that point automatically. Nextly, use NVDA+Shift+Up arrow, then down arrow so you'll get it to focus properly. From there, use NVDA+Shift+Right arrow to get info on the location of the fleet, their baringg, the amount of total fuel, etc. Pretty useful and not too difficult a task I'd say. For now the fleet won't have any orders until you advance time because well, they haven't been auto-assigned an order as yet. The second you advance time, that section will be updated with their heading, how long the distance will take ETC.
Back To Advancing Time
Continuing to advance time a few interesting developments have popped up. On Mars, a ruin was discovered. Ruins are ancient settlements that contain artifacts that we can use. Factories, refinaries and ancient alien items all for the taking. NNS Hibiscus and Scarlet Ibis were completed which is our first line of defense. I've went ahead and ordered 2 more, Shaconia, and Hummingbird. Remember what I said in part 1 about fleet training? Yeah. Since we've just commissioned 2 shiny new ships into the navy, we've got to train them now.
Fleet Training, Admin Commands & More!
Fleet training might sound scary, but its really not, however, this is another area where you'll need to get creative. In order to train your fleets, you'll need to make something called an Admin Command, and set it to Training. An Admin Command you can think of as a grouping of fleets overseen by a higher authority, who applys their bonus to all the ships in the command. However, in order to put a ship into an Admin Command, you'll have to drag and drop. With NVDA, I use an addon I found on Github which will be linked below. Focus on the name of your navy as a whole, and tab over to create new Admin Command. Name it, and enter. Make sure you're focused on the training command again, and tab forward a few times to the 2nd list view, focus on TRN training, and update the command. You're all ready to begin.
You can also tab forward a bit and adjust the type of commander you want commanding your command. There are a grouping of combo boxes with the various traits, and then 1 for the minimum rank of the commander. You want to set all the boxes to Crew Training. This will ensure you get a commander with a decent score.
Now in order to put your fleets into the command, you focus on it with Object Nav. So navigate to it with arrows normally then press NVDA+backspace to point the mouse there, and NVDA+Shift+M to ensure the mouse is focused on the item. In this case Battle Fleet. Using the addon, you press NVDA+comma to mark it to drag. To move it to the admin command, you repeat a similar process on the command itself, but instead of pressing NVDA+Comma, press NVDA+Shift+Comma, followed by space and your fleet should be in training now.
A few Things To Know About Training
There are a few things for you to know about training. First of all, your ships actually have to get out and uh, train. In order for them to get the bonuses applied you'll have to send them off. They'll practice their gunnery, maneuvering, etc. This brings me on to the next point. The crew is gonna put the ship under max pressure. The engines, guns, sensors everything will be pushed to the very limit which means your ships will use by far more fuel and MSP's. The deployment clock will also tick faster so you'll have to be careful to make sure you don't send them too far from your homeworld. To train them, you use the movements tab, and the lists just after the checkboxes. I've ordered mine to visit Luna, then Mars, back to Luna and Earth to refuel and repeat. There is a repeat button just after the add order button. Once the crew training stat gets above 50% they won't receive penalties.
And Wrapping Up
I'm about to bring this to a close, but lets advance time to January. Our population is now 1.78 billion, and we're 2 million shy of completely employing our population! That means we can start building things to boost our industry, like more mines, financial centres, etc. From September to January, we researched ordnance production 64 MSP per hour and Jump Point Theory. This is big. For JP theory, I embarked on researching jump point radius 50k. I want to get that up to 1000KM. I also researched refueling system 80K Litres Per Hour. So again. We're doing good.
So again, thank you for reading. I hope you've enjoyed this and got some benefit out of it. If you didn't understand anything feel free to ask in the discussion topic in the General Games Room.
Resources
Like the last one, I'll be posting a few things to help you out but no more tutorials.
Here's the link to my current playthrough. Note, its a slightly older version. 2.10 versus 2.11
Here's the Github for the drag and drop NVDA addon.