Aurora v2.4.0 Patch Notes - December 18th 2023

[AuroraSteve]

Major Changes

Jump Drive Updates
Known Stars Update
Customised NPRs

Bug Fixes

• Corrected progression of higher level Laser Warhead Focus and Genome Sequence: Base Gravity techs.

• Fixed popup bug when clicking cancel after selecting Import on Events window.

• Corrected spelling in Active Terminal Guidance tech line.

• Fixed bug that allowed genetic conversion centres to increase population on a different system body.

• Previous missile now sets retargeting, active terminal guidance and multiple warhead values.

• Fixed #755 popup error.

• Fixed #3673 popup error.

• Fixed Base Gravity 20% so it increases gravity by 1.2 instead of 2.3.

• Fixed size of high-end particle beams.

• Conventional Troop Transport can be made obsolete.

• Damage due to secondary explosions from maintenance failures correctly reported as maintenance failure rather than enemy action.

• Only one Ordnance Transfer System can be added to a ship.

• Fixed extra minerals cost for Beam Fire Controls.

• ‘No Commander’ status for populations retains state on save.

• Prevented endless loop caused by dragging an organization node on to one of its child nodes.

• Correct number of missiles released by missiles with multiple second stages.

• Copying a class no longer links attached ground forces.

• Copying a an organisation will also copy the field positions.

• Corrected development cost of Sensor Jammer 8 from 30k to 300k.

• NPRs now able to destroy buoys

• Missile Fire Controls shown in their own section on the Technology window.

• Group Contacts works correctly for alien races with ‘Real Names’ selected.

• Naval commanders can no longer gain Xenoarchaeology skill. Ground commanders can no longer gain Diplomacy or Intelligence skills.

• Ground units without commanders are correctly removed from the game when their parent colony is deleted.

• Ground construction will no longer allow total task percentages above 100%.

• Added code to clear missile salvos with no missiles remaining.

• Fixed duplication of decoy launchers when copying fire control assignments to other ships.

• System bodies below 0.1G cannot be terraformed.

Minor Changes

• Halved the research cost of Active Terminal Guidance and fixed the 8000 RP gap in progression. As a result, +25% is now 4000 RP and +32% is 8000 RP.

• Updated Russian Naming Theme - Thanks to serger

• Updated Polish Naming Theme - Thanks to Kiero

• Updated German Navy ranks - Thanks to Elminster

• Auxiliary Control and Flag Bridge are now starting systems for both conventional and TN.

• Research costs for the Colonization Cost Reduction tech have been halved.

• The colour of system bodies on the System View window takes account of any colonization cost reduction tech.

• The icons for system bodies on the Galactic Map take account of any colonization cost reduction tech.

• As vessels of 500 tons or less can land on system bodies, they are treated as having a cargo shuttle bay for the purposes of loading and unloading.

• Heavy, Super-Heavy and Ultra-Heavy Vehicles types are now pre-requisites for their respective armour types.

Minor Races

The game details window has a new field called ‘Minor Race % of New NPRs’ with a default of 25%. This can be set from 0 to 100% and represents the chance that a new Trans-Newtonian NPR generated via exploration will be generated as a ‘Minor Race’

A Minor Race has the following characteristics:

• The generated population is reduced by 75%

• A Minor Race will not research jump point theory and will not deploy any gravitational survey ships or stabilisation ships

• A Minor Race will deploy very limited numbers of certain ship types, such as geo survey, diplomatic ships, scouts and tankers.

• A Minor Race will only deploy fuel harvesters and orbital miners if appropriate resources exist in its home system.

• The research strategy of a Minor Race will take the above into consideration

• As a consequence, Minor Races will only be able to leave their home system if another race builds a jump gate and the minor race detects a transit.

• As with all NPRs, the Minor Race will not object to foreign Diplomatic ships in its home system unless it has explored beyond it.

Minor races are intended as different type of challenge to a full-scale NPR or one of the spoiler races. They function as a small NPR, but without the threat of expansion. It would also be possible to setup a game with multiple starting NPRs and the Minor Race chance set to 100%, so that the player and the starting NPRs are effectively major powers and any newly generated races would be minor powers.

New Naming Themes

Added the following Naming Themes (thanks to many different contributors)

• Adjectives

• Adverbs

• Aircraft Nicknames

• Alliance - Union Merchanters & Transports

• Antarctic Volcanoes

• Biblical Idioms

• Big Cities

• Birds of Prey (exc Eagles)

• Brazilian states

• British Columbia Volcanoes

• British East India Company Ships

• Cat Types

• Chinese Cities

• Chinese Provinces

• Clipper Ships

• Colorado Towns

• Constellations

• Dragons

• Dutch Towns and Cities

• European Rivers

• European Volcanoes

• Exoplanet Names

• Exotic Colours

• Fast Animals

• Flowers

• Football Referees

• Foundation Characters

• Four-Digit Numbers

• French Provinces

• German Cities

• Himalayan Peaks

• Indian Cities

• Indian Cricketers of the 80s

• Indian Rivers

• Indian States

• Insects of Family Asilidae

• Insects Species Latin

• Irish Navy Ships

• Italian Regions

• Last Stands

• Krellan battlecruisers

• Mythological Birds

• Numbers as Words

• Octopus Families

• People Named Robert

• Ranidae

• Rag & Bone Men

• Road Class Freighters

• Scottish Lochs

• SFB - Orion Ships

• Shakespearean Idioms

• Space Liner names

• Space Shuttles

• Spanish Communities

• Star Trek - Bajoran Ships

• Star Trek - Ferengi Ships

• Star Trek - Vulcan Ships

• Star Trek - Andorian Ships

• Tank Names

• Texas Alamo Defenders

• Texas Animals

• Texas Birds

• Texas Cities

• Texas Counties

• Texas Historical Figures

• Texas Native American Tribes

• Texas Rangers

• Texas Reptiles

• Texas Rivers

• Tigers

• Virtues

• Virtues - Benjamin Franklin

• Virtues - Roman

• Weather Terms

• Welsh Islands

• Welsh Lakes

• Welsh Mountains

• Welsh Towns

• Welsh Waterfalls

New Commander Name Themes

I’ve found a site that generates random names for a given theme. They aren’t brilliant, but they are fine for NPRs. Using the site, I have added the Commander Naming Themes below.

You can find the site at: https://worthstart.com/star-trek-klingon-names/

• Andorian

• Bajoran

• Cardassian

• Ferengi

• Gorn

• Klingon

• Nausicaan

• Tellarite

• Vulcan

New Rank Structures

Added the following new rank structures:

• Klingon

• Romulan

• Cardassian

• Bajoran

• Ferengi

• Vulcan

• Andorian

• Gorn

Reduced-Size Missile Launchers

The reload rate modifier for reduced-size missiles has been updated and a new 50% reduction option has been added.

[AuroraSteve]

Jump Drive Changes

The design of jump drives is changing significantly for v2.4.0. They will become much smaller and adding a jump drive will become a design consideration for any large ship, not just for dedicated jump ships.

The changes are as follows:

• The Jump Drive Efficiency techs have been renamed as Base Jump Drive Efficiency

• The research cost for each jump drive base efficiency tech system has been halved compared to the old efficiency techs, so the new Base Efficiency 8 (for example) has the same research cost as the current Efficiency 6.

• The minimum jump drive size tech line has been removed.

• The minimum jump drive cost of 10 BP has been removed.

• There is no longer any efficiency reduction or squadron size reduction for commercial jump drives

• Squadron Size and Jump Radius increase the cost of a jump drive, but no longer increase it’s size

• Military jump drives have an Efficiency Modifier equal to: (HS / 20)^(1/4) with a minimum of 1. HS is hull spaces, so this could also be written as (Size in Tons / 1000)^(1/4).

• The size of a jump drive in HS will be equal to: Jump Capability in HS / (Base Efficiency * Efficiency Modifier)

• In effect, this means that any jump drive intended for a ship of 1000 tons or more will receive a bonus to efficiency and that bonus will increase with size (see tables below)

• The cost of a Military jump drive is equal to: (Jump Capability in HS / Base Efficiency) * 5

• The efficiency modifier, cost and size of Commercial Jump Drives are calculated as if they were a military drive with 20% of the commercial jump capability. For example, a 100,000 ton commercial jump drive will be the same size and cost as a 20,000 ton military jump drive

The tables below show the size and cost for a range of jump drive sizes with base efficiency techs of 6 and 8.

When designing a jump drive on the Create Project window, the jump drive size parameter has been replaced by a Jump Capability parameter, which is the size of the ship for which the drive is being designed.

A new section has been added to the window, which allows the player to choose the granularity of the Jump Capability parameter. Selecting 1000 for example will populate the field with multiples of 1000 tons, while selecting 100 will populate with multiples of 100 tons. The dropdown has 1000 entries.

[AuroraSteve]

Known Stars Update

The number of Known Stars in the database has been increased from approximately 4,500 to over 63,000. This includes every star within 775 light years of Sol, plus a few hundred further out. This doesn’t change theoretical game size, as the game will still only generate systems you discover, but it creates a much larger sandbox in which to play.

The basis of the data is an Access database of the Hipparcos Catalogue (HIP), created by the European Space Agency, plus a LOT of parsing and data cleansing by me to sort out misclassifications, duplications, positional errors, etc., before converting everything to something that Aurora can use. A lot of the HIP data (spectral class, naming, etc.) is free text, which can make parsing tricky and is prone to simple typing errors.

In addition, the Hipparcos Catalogue tracks binaries as two separate stars without any link between them and often doesn’t use the same nomenclature for linked stars. Fortunately, the Gliese catalogue does have A and B designations and HIP includes the Gliese designation where it exists (although Gliese only has 3800 stars). Even so, figuring out which are binaries has been an significant task. At some point, I am going to do a proximity check on Celestial coordinates and use any close matches as a basis to find some more. This is a lot more difficult further out as many stars are listed by Simbad (see below) as Spectroscopic binaries, so we only know there are two or more stars because the spectrum changes as we are unable to resolve them visually.

The distance also changes the mix of star types. There are a lot of known red dwarves within a hundred light years, but far less further out because we can’t detect them.

I’ve made extensive use of the Simbad database, created by the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center, which is more up to date, in the data cleansing effort. Simbad is very useful if you know the star designation you need. At first I thought it lacked some key information, until I found out how to calculate distance from parallax information and how to estimate binary separation by using observed arc seconds and distance from Sol

Below is an example page for Simbad. If you know Right Ascension and Declination (the ICRS coordinates), which is the position in the sky, and Parallax, which is how that position changes as Earth orbits the Sun, you can calculate a 3D coordinate relative to Sol. The further away the star, the less accurate the original measurements, but its fine for Aurora. The bottom section is all the different names for this single, relatively obscure, star. The HIP data mixes up names from many different existing catalogues, but provides a new HIP ID as well and Simbad has HIP, so it acts as a Star Catalogue Rosetta stone.

I am sure there are still going to be errors in data, although they should not cause bugs. If you do pick up any obvious mistakes - like Antares turning up as a red dwarf - then let me know. In addition to the new information, I’ve also done a thorough revision of the existing data to correct a few errors.

[AuroraSteve]

Customised NPRs

A new ‘Customise NPRs’ checkbox has been added to the Game Setup window. If this option is selected, a new NPR Setup window will appear once for each NPR (based on ‘Number of Non-Player Races’ parameter in game setup).

The NPR Setup window is pre-populated with random data, but each field can be overridden if desired to chose the starting parameters for the NPR. The following options are available:

• Race Name, Race Title and Home World name

• Images for Race, Flag, Ship and Station

• Commander Naming Theme and Rank Theme

• Name Themes for Systems, Classes, Ground Forces and Missiles

• Species characteristics such as Xenophobia, Determination, etc.

• Population Size Modifier. This is applied as a modifier to the normal population size generation for NPRs.

• Production, Research and Growth modifiers. These function in the same way as those in player race setup

• Starting Tech Point and Build Point modifiers. These will be applied as modifiers to the normal starting tech point and build point generation for NPRs. Note that population is already a modifier to tech points and build points, so the Population Size Modifier will also affect these parameters.

• Ship Size modifier. This is applied as a modifier to the normal NPR ship size generation. Setting this value higher than 1 will override the random size increase introduced in v2.2.

• If the Race uses Shields: Yes, No or Random

• If the Race uses Missiles: Yes, No or Random

• Primary Beam Weapon: Random, Laser, Railgun, Particle or Carronade

• Point Defence Beam Weapon: Random, Laser, Railgun or Gauss

• Starting System. A specific system can be chosen for Known Stars games. A habitable world will be generated in the selected system.

• Dominant Terrain. One or more terrains can be selected. The habitable world generated for the NPR will have one of the selected terrains, with suitable planetary characteristics to support that terrain.

Here is an example NPR setup window.