Welcome back to the third part of our Aurora playthrough. I want to dedicate this one to establishing a colony, or maybe colonies. I got back survey data and Murcury looks like a good planet to move into. Mars looks like a bust with Luna being an OK second option. So I may as well go in to Murcury and Luna. It has alot of vital resources, like Gallicite and Duranium.
Lets discuss Private Industry
In alot of cases, private corporations will do things much more efficiently than government ones. For example, the vast majority of innovation in space right now is being vanguarded by private companies, not NASA. That's somewhat the case here in Aurora too. Shippinglines will establish themselves once you've created your first populated colony. Eventually, they'll even form inter-stellar Titanics. Their main role are to carry people, goods and instilations from colony to colony. In other words, they cut down on your expenses as you won't need to maintain large fleets of colony ships or even cargo vessels. Cargoships are still important for moving minerals and so on, but the private companies can move instilations providing you put in an order for them. The thing with them is they won't do anything unless you establish a colony yourself. Once there's demand for settlers, they'll start constructing and launching ships. As industry is built up on the colony, they'll begin making freighters to send the supplies to and fro. If you put out a particularly large order for moving instilations, they'll begin building more and more ships. So they function on the principles of supply and demand. So why am I telling you all of this? Just so you'll know its not a good idea to go out and build shitloads of colony ships like I did in my original playthrough. 2 or 3 are fine, and once the shipplines get established you can scrap em.
Establishing our colonies. What do we need?
Just like all things in Aurora, colonising a world is dependent on the particular case of that specific planet or body. The things to look for is the colonisation cost, infrastructure per million, and its athmosphere. The colony cost is the cost to colonise it relative to earth. Every colony cost is approximately 100 infrastructure to support 1 million people. The athmosphere thing is the most complicated. A breathible athmosphere helps in lowering the colony cost. In order for it to be habitable, you'll need it to contain 20-30% oxygen and no toxic gases. Luna at present has no athmosphere, which means our job is to create one. The colony cost is also pretty low ditto for Mars. Murcury is a bit more involved though.
Alternative forms of colonisation
Like I said earlier, there's always a different way to do something in Aurora according to the situation in front of you. Take for example, while writing this Geodata came in for Venus. There are significant resources on the planet however there are 2 main problems.
1, The planet is expensive as hell to colonise. It takes 821 infrastructure to support a million colonists. For comparison Luna only requires 67.
2, The accessibility of the minerals on their is horribly low. With the acception of Gallicite, all of the other available minerals have an accessibility of 0.1. Which is to say with my current tech each mine will only extract 1 ton of minerals.
In addition to the biological properties I mentioned, these 2 are significant. Given the situation, IE, high planet cost and low yield, the ideal situation would be to create an automated mining colony here. In other words, move a crapton of auto mines and a mass-driver and have them stream supplies to Earth or your main industrial colony. If, lets say the colony cost was equally as high but the accessibility was much higher then you might consider orbital habitats. They allow colonists to be housed in space stations in orbit of the particular body. So in otherwords it functions as if they were living on the planet, however they don't live on the surface and no infrastructure required. You can eventually teraform the planet with either teraforming ships or instilations on the planet later on which will allow you to move settlers on the planet normally. This also allows for some interesting RP campaigns.
Back on track
Its now March 2027. I just completed research into Primary Flight Control and I'm now researching the Auxiliary control module, which will allow for an Executive Officer to be assigned to my ships. I've decided to move all my automated mines to Venus. I'll build a few back on earth to fill in the gap. I only have 1 cargoship the St Lawrence, so I'll order another one, Hudson. Its also a good idea to expand my shipyard capacity, so I'm adding another slipway to 2 commercial yards and I'm going to expand the tonnage supported by my naval yards. My largest shipyard will be boosted to 16 thousand. I decided to leave my second, third and third largest yards at 11K tons, but added a third slipway to the bigger two and a second slipway to the smallest one. My fourth largest shipyard is an interesting case. It has eight thousand tons and 3 slipways I decided to add an extra slipway to it and eventually bump it up to 10K tons. With a 4TH slipway even at its eight thousand ton support it would be pretty useful as I can crank out light cruisers and heavier destroyer platforms. The other shipyards are all 8K tons and has 2 slipways so I'm going to add an extra slipway to all of them.
Colony Ships and the glory of the copy class button
Yet again, I made a minor oversight that lost us some time. I forgot to design and construct a colonyship that will move colonists from Earth to the new world but have no fear, we shall do so now. When designing Cargoships and freighters, its important to note that you can design them to be pretty similar to each other. The copy class button in the class design window allows you to make an exact replica of your design free for you to design and edit. This is useful for upgrades and of course making similar platforms. All we're doing for our colony ship is removing the cargo storage and replacing it with cryogenic chambers. 1 cargohold is equal to 10 standard sized cryo chambers so we'll make that adjustment. Wideview, tab over to the second list view that shows us the components on the ship, and remove the holdand put ten cryo standard cryo chambers in its place. That's it. That easy. If you had a shipyard with multiple slipways, you could retool it to the larger class and build them in the same yard.
Pro Tip
If you haven't noticed by now, Colony ships take forever to build in comparison to cargoships. That's because cryogenic chambers are expensive as hell but as per usual, there's a fix for this. Go to the industry tab, scroll down to components, and order as much cryo chambers as you'd need for your ships. This is also useful later on when you're building capitalships as guns and bigger engines can be expensive. According to the cost of the component, manufacturing it with industry can significantly cut down on production times. I also ordered engines for it which should hopefully significantly axe that production time. Since we're here I've also ordered 2500 infrastructure or enough to support about 37 million people on the moon.
Back on track... Again
Do you remember the paranoia from part 2? Well the orbital defenses have been trained. I also now have better beam fire control tech which is always cool. I'm now gonna research better laser tech in this case visible light. The engines and cryo chambers are complete. I ordered a Calypso and as I thought the construction time was drastically reduced. It went from having a completion date of October 2029 there abouts to December 2027. So as I said stock piling big components like guns and engines can save you in the longrun. Even if you move to a new generation of gun you could simply do what the British did and use leftover guns in lesser battleships, battlecruisers and monitors.
I decided to switch out my standing order for the surveyer. It now surveys for the nearest system body or possible jump point. Power and Propulsion, I decided to invest in gacious reactors which will open the door for significantly better engine tech.
We're in July now, and I researched improved fuel transfer. I think I'll leave that techline alone for now. I did decide to research jump point stabalisation, which will allow me to build the all important jump gates.
Its August and the 2500 infrastructure I ordered is complete. I decided to order 50 financial centres which will employ 2.5 million people and boost my overall economy. Also, our police cutters have completed their training. I've sent them into overhall which is where their systems are cleaned up, redone etc which will make them function as if they're new.
Its now december and the second St Lawrence and Calypso are online. I've switched the cargoships to move infra to the moon, a little late but I'll be able to move colonists in a few months. If you want to move things to the moon quicker though, advancing time by a day or even 5 days will speed it up.
2028
Its now January 2028 and things are looking up. We've researched higher research rate vastly speeding up our research. I decided to invest in ship construction tech to allow us to build ships faster. Luna can support about 3.2 million people, or about as much as Puerto Rico so lets begin moving colonists up there. To do this we set the standing order of the fleet to load colonists at capital, and unload colonists. Soon enough the moon will become a productive colony.
My visible light lasers are now ready, so keeping down the path of good lasers I've invested in better turret tracking gear which will allow my turrets to engage faster targets without a weight penalty. The Aux bridge is also complete so I decided to research the Flag Bridge Module. There are now 300K people on luna in just 2 weeks which is nice.
Its 7TH February and my first pair of Police Cutters are out of overhall. Lets consider this their date of commissioning.
March, and my second batch of Police Cutters are completed. I created a secondary fleet called Precommission Fleet for all my new ships that I want to train and I put them there.
It's now June. I decided to skip out a few months as it was getting somewhat repetetive. But over that time we completed Gacious reactors, turret tracking, and our all important stabalisation module. I started work on Nuclear Gas Core Engines, a better JP stabaliser, and better turret tech. I also stopped moving infrastructure to Luna since it could support well over 31 million people presently. I shipped up a few mines and financial centres and, I'm going to also ship up a few teraforming modules to begin making it even more habitable.
Ship building rate 560BP is complete. Keeping in that spirit I started research on shipyard operations/cost time savings to hopefully speed up expanding my yards, retooling for classes, etc. You'll notice there's a worker shortage on Luna, and that's perfectly fine. The population is rapidly growing so that gap will quickly full in.
Interestingly, I just got my first taste of private industry. A mining colony was established on an asteroid. What they do is extract minerals which you can beam back to earth and also tax for a little wealth boost. The main thing that I find interesting about this and I only just found out is the fact the game auto designed the tech needed to garrison the colonies which is neat.
And finally. This is what I've been waiting for. The shippingline has launched a freighter which means colony ships will follow. In addition this also means intra-imperial trade will begin which is to say the Earth and Luna will send supplies back and forth at a cost that you will tax.
Lets talk about The Civilian/Flag Tab
The civilian and flag tab is pretty useful. From here you issue contracts for the various shippinglines to move instilations throughout the empire. The first combo box sets the item you would like to be shipped to your colony while the final combo box is the item you would like to be taken away from your colony. The demand is the amount you want brought in, while the supply is the amount you want taken away. You can also set a colony to be shut off from civilian industry via the radio checkbox. I ordered 10 teraforming modules to be moved to Luna from Earth. The interesting thing is the more I make demands of them, the more they build ships to keep up with demand. Note, civilian contracts will take priority over trading goods.
And to wrap up 2028, shipyard time/cost savings has been completed, and I'm going to go ahead and research another level.
Teraforming Luna
I'll be honest here and say Teraforming is still somewhat perplexing to me, but I'll do my best to explain it to you. You manage the teraforming of a planet from the environment tab of the economics screen. The first combo box manages the gas you want to pump into the athmosphere, in our case Nitrogen. In order for a planet to be habitable, it requires no toxic chemicals, so no chlorine gas. In addition, about 10-30% has to be oxygen according to the tolerances of the race. Anything more or less and it gets thrown off. Climate is another factor. Warmer climates can help with lowering the colony cost I believe. Luna has no athmosphere so we'll be starting from scratch. While teraforming its important to monitor the state of affairs on a given planet. You don't want it to be too hot or cold. Nitrogen is a good gas to quickly warm up a planet without toxcicity.
Teraforming Ships
Another method of teraforming a planet is teraforming ships. They're ships equipped with teraformation modules which pump gas from space. They can be pretty useful but I'd rather employ workers here.
Another oopsie
Heh, another oopsie. I managed to completely eat up all of my fuel reserves but I have sufficient reserves of sorium to replennish my fleet. Thankfully this isn't wartime otherwise that would be crippling. This is why its important to monitor your resources at all times.
And wrapping up...
Its March 2029 4 years since we started and things are looking up. Luna is a thriving settler colony, industry on earth is booming and we have an innovative tech sector. The next few chapters should be pretty interesting as I suspect we might meet our first alien foes in the next round of gameplay. Once again thank you so much for following along, and if you have any questions or feedback feel free to leave them.
Resources
Not many resources this time round aside for The Playthrough's save
Note, this is a slightly newer save in comparison to where the playthrough ends. I'm not sure what happened. I started writing this playthrough about 2 months ago and when I first did so Luna's survey data was pretty favourable. However when I started writing part 4, which is the part after this I went back and looked at Luna's mineral count and to my horror saw nothing was there. Because I wasn't in the mood to establish a colony on Murcury while evacuating Luna, I simply rerolled the minerals on there. This is the only time during the playthrough something like that's going to happen, I'm really unsure what happened there. I think my computer was having some glitches and I perhaps shut it down without saving or something idk.