Aurora Electrons - Looking Inwards (v0.10.4)

[MatsorBrowncoat]

Since the old forums are gone, I’m recreating the Aurora Electrons thread here.

Aurora Electrons is a general purpose observation utility for Aurora 4x C#.

Current version: v0.10.4 | Download the executable

Source code, release notes and previous versions are available from the GitHub release page above.

It reads the Aurora database and shows information about a specific game:

• Production queue, including research, construction, shipyards, ground unit training and terraforming, with estimated time remaining
• Warnings (inspired by AuroraMarvin), including damaged ships, low maintenance supplies, low crew morale, unused mining or terraforming capacity, and idle or stuck fleets
• Minerals and Mineral Outlook, with deposits, accessibility, filters, CMC candidates, stockpile and mining forecasts, sources and uses, and estimates of when mined deposits will run out
• Colonization Planner, with bodies ranked for population, minerals or both, infrastructure requirements and terraforming blueprints
• Colony Outlook, with population growth, infrastructure limits and the workforce split over a selected time horizon
• Fuel & Maintenance, with fuel stocks, refining and consumption, and maintenance supplies by location
• Hauling and Transport, with repeating freight route estimates, transport capacity, and civilian installation supply and demand
• Finances, with wealth income and expenditure by category over the last year
• Survey Progress, with remaining survey work, survey fleets and ground survey sites
• Commanders, with a searchable roster, bonuses and suggestions for better assignments
• Empire History, with population, wealth, fleets, research, minerals and other trends over game time; rival empire history is available in spy mode
• Intelligence, showing what your race knows about the alien races it has met
• Tech Tree, with Fields, Lines and prerequisite Path views, available technologies and current research projects
• Game log with filters
• Map navigator and editor (WIP)
• Designed technologies (WIP)

Forecasts and terraforming plans are estimates, not game orders. Empire History builds up from snapshots while Electrons is open, with a new point each time Aurora saves. It cannot recover past history from a single database.

Installation

Installation is straightforward. Put the executable in your Aurora folder, alongside AuroraDB.db, and run it. Select your game and race, and it will reload the data when you save in Aurora.

Alternatively, put it in a separate directory with a copy of AuroraDB.db. Replace the copy when you want to update the data.

The views read the database. The map’s Save Positions command is an exception: it writes system coordinates back to the database, after confirmation. Back up your save before using it.

Other changes in v0.10

• Navigation is organised into seven sections, with hover menus, tabs, back and forward buttons, a page trail and Ctrl+K page search.
• The app starts on an Empires page. Selecting an empire takes you back to its last page.
• Startup is much faster, the layout fits 1280x720, and database reads and reloads should be less disruptive.
• Mineral deposits surveyed only by other races are no longer shown, and ground training estimates use the sector commander’s Ground Construction bonus.

Screenshots

Examples from skoormit’s EggSample Protectorate save. There are also a few short walkthroughs in the version update replies below.

Mineral Outlook

Stockpile and mining forecasts for Boronide, using a 365-day ledger window and a 25-year horizon. Material in transit counts as stock.

Colonization Planner

Targets ranked for Alliga, with Both selected and 100 hypothetical terraformers. Expand a body for its settlement costs and terraforming blueprint.

Research prerequisites

The prerequisites for Advanced Geological Sensors, including the research order and RP still needed. The all-labs time is an idealised comparison, not an ETA for the current queue.

Commander suggestions

Current governors compared with unassigned candidates. These are alternatives to consider, not automatic assignments or a plan to apply all at once.

Contributions, ideas and bug reports are welcome, here or on GitHub. You can also compile it yourself.

The original thread can be found in the Wayback Machine archive of the old forums.

[skoormit]

Alright then, here come some suggestions.
First up:
The CMC label in Minerals.Body–perhaps you could visually differentiate between bodies that qualify for one and bodies that already have one.
And the tooltip is not fully accurate. In fact the last part about changing the minerals is confusing. What does that mean?

[MatsorBrowncoat]

Wait, let me first make the version post here
I’m still gathering up screenshots!

[skoormit]

Minerals.Potential

Even with the tooltip, I don’t know what this is trying to tell me.

[skoormit]

Oh heck. I didn’t even check if you had updated here.
Holding fire.

[MatsorBrowncoat]

v0.10.2 is now available. It’s been a few week (or a few months) in the making and quite a bit has changed since v0.9.14, so here is a rundown. And a few short examples.

Download the executable | Release notes

Installation is the same: put the executable alongside AuroraDB.db, or use a separate directory with a copy of the database.

New pages

• Mineral Outlook: stockpile and mining forecasts, years of stock remaining, mineral sources and uses, and estimates of when the deposits you are mining will run out.
• Colony Outlook: population growth, infrastructure limits and the workforce split over a selected time horizon.
• Fuel & Maintenance: fuel stocks, refining and consumption, plus maintenance supplies grouped by maintenance location.
• Finances: wealth income and expenditure by category over the last year.
• Hauling: estimates of cycle time, cargo throughput and fuel use for repeating freight routes.
• Survey Progress: remaining survey work, the fleets doing it and ground survey sites.
• Commanders: a searchable roster with bonuses, and suggestions for better governors, specialist ship officers and research leads.
• Empire History: population, wealth, fleets, research, minerals and other trends over game time. It starts recording from the saves you load with this version; it cannot recover past history from a single database. Keep Electrons open while playing to add a point each time Aurora saves. Rival empire history is available in spy mode.
• Intelligence: a view of what your race knows about the alien races it has met.

Other Changes

Habitability is now the Colonization Planner. It ranks bodies for population, minerals or both, with infrastructure requirements, settlement plan categories and more detailed terraforming blueprints. You can filter the systems and types of bodies you want to consider.

The Tech Tree has three views: Fields for available technologies and current projects, Lines for technology progressions, and Path for the prerequisites of a particular technology.

Navigation has been reorganised into seven sections, with hover menus, tabs within each section, back and forward buttons, a page trail and Ctrl+K page search. The app starts on an Empires page, and selecting an empire takes you back to its last page.

There are also idle/stuck fleet warnings, CMC candidate indicators in Minerals, and a link back to this thread in About.

Startup is much faster, the layout now fits 1280x720, and database queries/reloads should be less disruptive, at least that was my intention. This release also fixes mineral deposits leaking in from surveys belonging only to other races, and the sector Ground Construction bonus used for ground training estimates.

The Few Examples

These screenshots are from skoormit’s EggSample Protectorate save. I hope he doesn’t mind too much. The forecasts are estimates, not game orders, and the examples below do not change anything in Aurora.

Finding a mineral shortage

1. Open Economy > Outlook. Pick a ledger window and forecast horizon. Here I used 365 D and 25 Y.
2. Select a mineral, or check the shortest runway at the top. In this save Boronide is the first problem: about 1.2 years of stock and material in transit at the net rate shown.

The projected stockpile curve gives about 1.5 years in this example. It models the mining deposits separately, rather than simply extending the ledger’s net rate. Mining output changes as deposits are worked down; other income and uses stay at today’s rates. Material in transit counts as stock.

3. Open Sources and Uses to see where the imbalance comes from. Sources are to the right of zero, uses to the left. Here construction and shipbuilding account for most of the Boronide consumption.

Further down the Outlook page, the deposit list helps identify which mining sites will empty within the selected horizon.

The other examples follow in the next reply.

[AuroraSteve]

Because some of the posts are pasted in, rather than typed, and include links and are from a new member, the forum rules are flagging some as spam. I’ll fix them as they popup, but they should stop being flagged naturally within a few days.

[MatsorBrowncoat]

The Few Examples (Continued)

Comparing colony sites and a terraforming plan

1. Open Colonies > Colonization and choose the species you want to settle. Select People, Minerals or Both according to what you are looking for.
2. Set a hypothetical number of Terraformers, then look through Best Targets. This example uses Alliga, Both and 100 terraformers. The table compares settlement cost, population capacity and mineral value.

3. Expand a body to see why it ranks where it does and what its terraforming plan involves. For Dabgram B II, the estimated colony cost falls from 1.8 to 0.58, and infrastructure from 180 to 58 per million people. It is not made fully habitable throughout its orbit.

The blueprint gives gas targets, an estimated duration, and the installations needed to finish within different times. The long duration here uses the save’s 10% terraforming speed and the 100 terraformers entered above, before commander and colony modifiers. Changing this number only changes the estimate; it does not assign installations in Aurora.

Finding the prerequisites for a technology

1. Open Research > Tech Tree, switch to Path, and search for your target in the Technology box.
2. Follow the arrows or the Research in this order list. Here Advanced Geological Sensors needs Improved Geological Sensors first: 10,000 RP, then 35,000 RP, for 45,000 RP still to spend. The basic Geological Survey Sensors are already researched.

3. Click a box to inspect that technology, or check Opens for what the target unlocks next. Green is available, blue is researched, and grey is still locked.

The “With every lab on it” time is an idealised comparison using the empire’s research output, not an ETA for the current queue. Research assignments still have to be made in Aurora.

Checking commander assignments

1. Open Empire > Commanders. Under Better assignments, choose Governors, Specialist ships or Research.
2. Compare the current holder with the suggested unassigned candidate. Governor suggestions follow the colony’s governor bonus priorities. Here population growth is the first priority, so Cruz Mcclish’s +15% beats Haak V’Lett’s +10% despite the loss of the mining bonus.

3. Make any assignment you want in Aurora, then save to refresh Electrons. The same candidate can appear against several posts, so this is a set of alternatives to consider, not a plan to apply all at once. The roster below also lets you search and compare individual bonuses.

I’m assuming there are and will be a lot of bugs, and maybe some suggestion, so as always, ideas and bug reports are welcome either here or on GitHub.

Feel free to contribute if you have ideas yourself, I am open to it.

[MatsorBrowncoat]

Open Fire All

[jake]

I’ve used this for a while, just wanted to say thank you for a great tool and I’m looking forward to using it again on 3.0!

[MatsorBrowncoat]

v0.10.3 - Civilian mining complexes and the missing mining

Download

Thanks for the CMC feedback, this should make the labels and tooltips a bit clearer. There is also a fix for mining that wasn’t being counted in Mineral Outlook.

Civilian mining complexes

• In Minerals, existing complexes now have a filled CMC label with the number of complexes. Candidates have an outlined CMC label.
• Candidates are only shown when civilian mining complexes are enabled for the game and the body is in reach.
• The CMC and Potential tooltips now explain the game’s fixed rule and how the 0-10 potential score is calculated.

Colonization Planner now checks all the conditions needed to found a CMC: complexes must be enabled, you need a shipyard and more than one settled colony, the star must be in reach, and the body must stay within 80 AU of its star at its farthest. Gas giants are excluded. The body must also have no colony, except that one of your own with only orbital miners is allowed.

Mining

Mineral Outlook now counts mining from colonies that buy their CMCs’ minerals and ship them out by mass driver. The game’s ledger doesn’t log this, so it was missing from the calculation. On one test save this accounted for over 60% of the race’s mining, so the difference can be quite substantial.

As usual, put aurora-electrons-0.10.3.exe in your Aurora folder, next to AuroraDB.db, and run it.

[Boscodiogigia]

Very nice update! The tool was already very useful, and now it’s even better.

I noticed a small bug: Electron also includes retired and deceased commanders in the Commanders window.

It would also be nice to be able to adjust the time span shown in the table in the History tab—for example, 10, 20, or 50 years. Would that be possible? By the way, i have added some screensot of Aurora Electrons in the last update of my AAR.

[MatsorBrowncoat]

Thanks! v0.10.4 is out and addresses both the commander bug and the History time spans.

• Retired, dead and captured commanders no longer appear in the active roster, the Tech Tree’s idle scientists or History’s commander count. Aurora still stores them when you use Retain.
• A Former commanders panel shows how they left, their last career record, age, kills, medals and top bonuses. Expand a commander for the full career. For captured commanders, it shows the captor as your race knows it.
• Held by us shows alien commanders held on your ships or at your colonies, including their race, rank, location and whether they have been interrogated.
• History now has 10 y / 20 y / 50 y / All options. These apply to the tiles, charts, table and rivals, and the selection is remembered between sessions. The CSV export still includes every snapshot.

Download v0.10.4. Put the executable next to AuroraDB.db, as usual.

Thanks for including Electrons in your AAR too!

[Boscodiogigia]

Wow, thank you! The Commanders window is really great. Thanks also for implementing my suggestions—awesome!

I noticed a couple of small bugs:

• I can no longer see the “better assignment” information for governors. It shows zero assigned governors, but I have 68, as shown in my previous screenshot.
• In the History tab, clicking on 10, 20 or 50 years doesn’t change the charts or the values. It seems to display only a short time range regardless of the option selected (see the screenshots below).

[MatsorBrowncoat]

The Governors (0) under Better assignments means zero suggested improvements, not zero assigned governors. Governors are still in the Administrators roster below.

Electrons compares unassigned administrators with the current governor of each colony. It uses the bonus priorities set in Aurora’s Economics window, on the Governor tab: a candidate must have the required bonus, and is ranked by that bonus first, then the secondary bonus if tied, then the tertiary bonus. A suggestion appears if the best available candidate beats the current governor, or can fill an empty governor post. It doesn’t look for swaps between governors who are already assigned.

There is nobody available to recommend. When an administrator becomes available, they can appear here if they meet those conditions.

History is Electrons’ own record, built from snapshots of the save. It starts when Electrons first reads the game, then adds snapshots as you save in Aurora while Electrons is open. The record is stored separately from AuroraDB.db and kept between sessions. It can’t reconstruct the earlier years of your campaign from the current save, or fill in saves it missed while closed.

The header in your screenshot shows 5 snapshots, from 1972-08-09 to 1972-08-14, so only five in-game days so far. Even a couple of months of recorded history would give the same result: all those snapshots fit inside the last 10 years, other filters all select exactly the same data. The charts fit the available dates rather than adding decades of empty space.

Keep Electrons open while playing and saving, and the history will grow. The shorter ranges will start excluding older snapshots once you have more than 10 years of recorded history.

[Boscodiogigia]

Ok, thank you for the explanation. I’ll keep Electron Open then.
Nice to know I don’t have to change Governors. Thanks for the tool

[Angelo_Pinto]

The UI looks amazing and it loads three times as fast

[MatsorBrowncoat]

v0.11.0 is out. This one adds more exploration tools, rebuilds the Galaxy Map and reworks several of the older pages.

Routes and Lagrange points

Route Finder now handles as many stops as needed, including colonies, fleets, systems, bodies, jump points and Lagrange points. It shows the route, distances and travel times, and explains why a destination can’t be reached with the current movement options. Lagrange Points also has a system map that can be panned and zoomed.

To try it, open Exploration > Routes, use Add stop to choose the places to visit, and set the speed. Compare Fewest jumps with Shortest, reorder the stops with the arrows, or enable Return to start for a round trip. The example below goes from Prime to Faaborg, then Baalbek.

Hauling now also builds a plan to cover colony mineral shortfalls, with links to Transport and Route Finder to check the proposed trips.

Galaxy Map

The map now works around arranging Aurora’s own galactic map in a way that is based on what I’ve seen people do over the years, to the best of my ability. It has named borders, custom system clusters, population-filled colony markers, and overlays for habitability, star types and distance. Ships, shipyards, waypoints, contacts, ruins, constructs, rifts, wrecks and danger can be shown too as little icons. The Discovery era layer has a funny little As of slider for seeing what the race had discovered by a given year.

Choose Habitability under Colour by and Sectors under Borders for the view below. Click a system to open its details and links to the related pages. Arrange can rebuild or tidy the layout, with pinned systems and clusters kept together.

Save positions writes the new layout to AuroraDB.db. Back up the save first, and use it with Aurora closed, or reload the save in Aurora before continuing so the game doesn’t overwrite the changes.

Production Recap

Each job now has a status, including paused work, queued projects and mineral shortages. Industrial queues are chained when estimating completion dates, with a completions chart and idle capacity listed by colony.

Search for a colony to narrow down its jobs, as with the Prime example below. Queued work shows when it can start, not just when it finishes. The Completions and Idle capacity by colony sections are further down the page.

Other changes

• Mineral Breakdown shows deposits still to mine and colony stocks against reserves. Mineral Outlook now forecasts beyond 10,000 years, with Half mined and Empty dates.
• Game Log has search, a monthly timeline, collapsed daily repeats and events new since the last visit.
• Designed Tech shows where components are used and compares designs, including figures per hull space and build point.
• Warnings has 42 checks, severity filters, mutes and links to the relevant pages.
• Transport works between two places, with figures by fleet and class. Settings and About have been reworked as well.
• Links between pages carry the selected colony, system, project or other context. Back and Forward follow that focus, and searches, options, table sorts and page sizes survive restarts.

Large-save page loads are faster, with the map tested at 2,324 systems. This release also fixes Aurora 2.6 saves failing in Colonization Planner and Mineral Breakdown, and corrects repeating hauling routes to handle every order destination type.

Download v0.11.0. Put aurora-electrons-0.11.0.exe next to AuroraDB.db, as usual.