Guide Recommendations

Player Questions
1

In-between installing the game and playing it for the first time the old forums shut down and all the guides went with it. I’ve gotten pretty far by following the MO Chad tutorials and I’m on my 3rd game due to Aether Raiders blowing up my attempts at warships and all my shipyards. Also had to re-learn a lot of stuff after realizing the wiki I was using was AI-generated.
As much as I enjoy the trial-and-error way of learning things I’m losing a lot of time from having to restart my campaigns when I mess up so I’ve been precariously sitting at 9 systems discovered until I can figure things out so I don’t lose progress again. Not being able to have like a user manual or wide assortment of guides and tutorials has left me feeling very lost though.

I’m in dire need of some resources with pointers on a few aspects of the game including but not limited to:

  • General warship doctrine/design for the early game to defend against raiders

  • An example of a warship (I suck at this more than anything else in the game right now and would like to see what not sucking at this looks like)

  • Ground force doctrine/formations (I found a nice planet with Rakhas but can’t even kill a single unit with what I come up with)

  • What to do with low-cost colonies that don’t have minerals because I see people recommend colonizing bodies like this but I don’t know why. Do I ship minerals to them so they can do constructions alongside earth or should I just flood them with financial centers and possibly some research facilities?

  • Planetary defense center design (is it really as simple as installing tons of lasers and power plants? and if so, how many tons should these be?)

  • General ways to learn how to play the game since I may be doing the trial-and-error approach ineffectively

  • Communication and diplomacy have me confused with how quickly I get blown up whether in an NPR’s home system or not. Haven’t managed to translate a single language so far.

Apologies for how broad and all-encompassing my questions are and I realize this is probably like the worst of times to ask for resources with how everything got nuked. Thank you guys for the surviving resources I did find though.

2 Likes
2

Normally, I would strongly recommend reading AARs to see how people do these things. Unfortunately, at the moment that’s somewhat infeasible due to the demise of the old forums where most of these were found. You can access some content through Wayback Machine but unfortunately not all of it.

A recent AAR which is still accessible is Blue Emu’s Sirius Business. It’s less of an AAR and more of a playthrough with stream-of-consciousness write-ups, and I will immediately caveat this recommendation by saying that the author often makes statements based on inaccurate or outdated information, but it is a good read to see some examples of how to deal with a variety of situations (notably Raiders).

I wouldn’t bother colonizing unless you see a good reason to. Eventually it makes sense to start moving stuff to low-cost bodies that are easy to grow for purely logistical reasons (e.g., moving factories to be closer to the main sources of minerals), and there’s benefits to having specialized colonies for financial centers, research, etc., but you don’t have to colonize every sub-2.0 body in sight just because it’s there.

PDCs are no longer in the game. You can build armed space stations (which are just ships without engines) or surface-to-orbit weapons instead.

One useful resource may be the Aurora 4x Documentation Archive put together by another user here. This seems to contain most of the changes in the C# version, which is a useful basis to understand most of the game mechanics (e.g., diplomacy is in there somewhere).

2 Likes
3

1: There are several ways to deal with raiders. STOs will defend colonies if the raiders ever show up on top of them and are also a good way to defend orbital miners and Sorium harvesters. For proper colonial defence you should probably have ships as the raiders could attack shipping inside a system. If you want to counter a raider ship you make sure your active sensor is tuned in to around 1000 tons target signature. Depending on your techlevel you might be able to outspeed and outrange the raider. In that case you simply need a small ship that can “kite” the raider and kill it from outside the raiders weapons range. If you can’t do that then a military ship of around 10k tons should easily dispatch a raider if they meet in a fight. The raider spends a lot of tonnage on staying stealthy, so you should be able to win in a ton for ton fight.

2: I reccomend looking at AARs for inspiration or the Aurora discord server which has a chat room just for designs.

3: From what I have experienced you dont need to make a very complex order of battle for your ground forces. Maybe as low as 2-3 levels of organization will probably be enough in most cases. For assaulting enemy fortifyed colonies you might want to bring armoured units that the enemy will strugle to penetrate. When invading a hostile one of the biggest issues might be troop lift capacity, therefor an “elite” force should be assembled for the assault as lower tier units will not do as well ton for ton.

This is an example of a division of tanks. I have not bothered adding artillery which I probably should, but this division could probably take on most colonies that are lightly defended.

image
image1372×650 28.4 KB

4: There are several reasons to colonize even without the precence of minerals. One reason is you get more population growth, as smaller colonies have higher growth percentage. If population is not an issue then it is still good to spread out for some of the reasons you have stated. If you have a colony with a lot of finacial centers but no govenor bonus for wealth creation on the same colony you are missing out on free wealth. Therefor it is good to have specialied colonies.

It is also good to have colonies in different systems to lay claim to them if you have neutral/friendly relations with an NPR.

I also like having small colonies in most systems to have refueling hubs and maintance locations to keep pushing the range of my exploration ships. You can also do this with maintance ships and such, but it is not the way I like to play. And sometimes I set up small colonies in between imporant systems to make sure my civilan trafic is not gonna be ambushed by raiders.

5: I have never tried them so someone else will need to reply.

6: Keep going with the trial and error. If you like youtube, then Defran has made many good tutorials for various things about the game, aswell as some older playthrougs which should mostly still be relevant. Other than that ask like you have just done if you wonder about anything as this community is very helpful.

7: Aurora v1.0.0 Launch Documentation - #35 by AuroraSteve It is a bit much to write here so you can read the patch note if you want. Most should still be relevant with minor changes since.

English is not my native language so forgive my for any misspelling and hope this was somewhat helpful :slight_smile:

Summary
1 Like
4

Thank you for your help and the AAR recommendation. I’ve been having trouble finding a good one that goes as in-depth as I’d need it to be so this is great.

5

This is very helpful, thank you. I need to ask, is there a way to order your units to kite at a certain distance from enemy ships or do you have to do so manually with fleet waypoints?

6

image
image559×594 15 KB

Yes. You use the follow order and enter the distance you want to follow the target. Follow also works if the target is trying to approch you and you are faster then the approaching ship. The order is in meters.

1 Like
7

In my experience one reason to colonize worlds without minerals is to grow your population. Eventually population can become a limiting factor.

1 Like
8

Note another is sometimes for civilian trade to generate revenue. A third if the system (or part of it) does not already have a sufficient population to enable civilian mining colonies. 4th potential reason is for a sensor location. I believe planetary sensory is strength is still impacted by population .

9

It is not.

1 Like
10

From studying the data in my game it is true that “Tracking Station Strength“ (which is listed on the summary page of the economics window) is a linear function of the number of stations (regardless of population).

11

It IS linear? All this time I thought it had diminishing returns as you dumped more and more. I really thought I was doing better having 10 tracking stations placed on 10 bodies throughout the system rather than 100 in one location.

1 Like
12

Well “Tracking Station Strength“ is linear with respect to number of stations but whether that means distance of detection (for fixed strength of enemy) is linear (which I assume is likely the case) or if it falls off with some other law like an inverse square law I have not tested.

1 Like
13

Sensor strength corresponds proportionally to the area swept by that sensor, which means that the distance that sensor extends out to depends on the square root of strength.

This matters when you need to extend sensor coverage in a straight line, e.g., when using a series of sensor fighters to extend missile detection range to increase the tracking bonus.

For planetary sensors, it rarely matters whether you put 100 sensors on one planet or 1 sensor on each of a hundred planets, you’ll cover the same area of space (less overlaps) either way. Of course, spreading out the sensor net gives you a nonzero chance of spotting an unfriendly vessel outside of that one planet’s radius, at the risk of allowing said vessel to get closer to that particular planet undetected.

3 Likes
14

  1. I usually build ships (corvettes and destroyers) with speeds of around 7000–7500 km/s or higher. Speed is crucial for catching and destroying raiders. Long-range weapons are also important—missiles are ideal, since raiders typically use lasers or railguns. Early on, you may struggle to kite them effectively with beam weapons. Their armor isn’t very strong, so you should be able to take them down quickly once you engage.
    You’ll also need STOs on every colony to detect them in time, and a fleet ready to respond wherever you want protection. That’s why colony maintenance is important too: infrastructure for population, as well as fuel and missile stockpiles to resupply your ships.

  2. A good ratio against Rakhas is about 4.5:1 on my experience—you need roughly four to five times their numbers. Sometimes even 10:1, depending on the situation. For ground forces, I usually go with a 50/50 mix: half infantry (for HP) and half tanks/vehicles (for DPS) plus supplies in the HQs formation.
    You’ll also need to defend your mining sites and stations. I usually keep one escort ship stationed wherever I have mining operations or fuel harvesting. When its deployment time runs out, I rotate it with another escort, and so on.

  3. You should build planetary tracking stations to detect hostile ships like raiders. In addition, having 10–20 STOs is a good baseline to defend colonies from incoming threats.
    It’s also a good idea to place STOs on planets, comets, or moons where you have mining stations or gas harvesting operations.

  4. I learned mostly by reading forums, Discord, and making a lot of mistakes. I’m still learning—and I like it that way.

  5. Spoilers will never initiate communication (as far as I know). Only NPRs can start diplomacy with you and potentially become friendly, although I’ve never had the chance to fully explore that. To initiate communication yourself, you need diplomatic ships within range of alien sensors.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
15

Has OP checked out the new Wiki? There is an aged, but still sound, Beam Warship Guide there:

C-Basic Beam Warship Tutorial - Aurora 4x Wiki

It is still a WIP (the wiki) and will hopefully someday be able to answer all of OP’s questions.

The biggest “problem” is that as Aurora is so open, there is usually a lot of “right” ways of doing something, but which “right” depends on many other things.

Already have many great responses, I’ll throw in a few more:

  1. Fighters based on “Escort Carriers” tend to work well.
  2. Ship and Design on Discord, lots of scrolling though. Defran’s ship build Youtube is a solid foundation.
  3. This is one of the hard ones, since it really depends on tech. However, as a GENERAL RULE: Infantry is for HOLDING planets and Armour is for TAKING them. Use intel and make sure to have a minimum 3:1 tonnage advantage in Front Line Attack, with Support/Rear Echelon should be about 5:1 advantage Can PM me for more details/examples.
  4. Style of play and location matter here. Can use them as “Fortress Worlds” if on/near the front, else skip them or turn them into Research/Financial/Academy “specialists”.
  5. STO’s lots of “right” answers here. They are combined with my Ground Force doctrine for Defense/Offense formations. 5k is about the minimum for a formation though.
  6. Inefficiently perhaps, but if one is learning trial and error is not really ineffective. It can be frustrating, but it does help define YOUR style.
  7. Dead things tell no tales is a valid diplomacy method. That said, spoilers don’t communicate. A general rule, things which can not be seen cannot be targeted, things which cannot be targeted cannot be shot…
2 Likes
16

I know you don’t want to waste time playing games that don’t end up working out, but Aurora 4x is similar to Dwarf Fortress in that losing is fun and each time something doesn’t work out you can learn from it.
I played quite a few games, learning lots along the way. It’s a huge bummer the old forums are gone though as there was a lot of good info.

There is a discord channel that is reasonably active and if you are playing you can often get answers quickly. There is also a wealth of info in there.. The ground combat section was pretty helpful for me when the new ground combat came out: Aurora4X

Some tips.

  1. Early on, missiles are your friend. Direct weapons are iffy until you get a fair bit into the tech tree. The exceptions are gauss and railguns. Both are useful for point defense and can work on fighter-type crafts.
  2. Speed is super important, for both your ships and your missiles. Once you have more experience you can experiment with slower ships, but generally speaking you want 25-33% of your ships mass to be in engines. For warships, you’ll usually want 90-100% engines (boost), though as fuel efficiency goes up, you can experiment with higher.
  3. For combat ships go easy on the fuel and build dedicated tankers to refuel. Look at the normal distances your ships travel to get to the jump points and onto another colony. It’s a lot less than you think.
  4. Ignore shields early on and focus on armor. A warship should have at least 5 layers but more if better.
  5. Resources are important so you want to explore and get some solid deposits as you will run out quickly on your home planet.

I’m excited for 2.8 to drop because it’s been a bit since I’ve done a good playthrough. Lots of great changes are coming.

2 Likes
17

These engine fractions are on the low side. I’d usually recommend 32-36% for missile and carrier fleets and 36-40% for beam fleets. These ranges will help you keep parity with similar-tech NPRs.

2 Likes
18

Thank you for the discord link, I was having trouble finding it. I didn’t realize how important speed was for warships but that makes a lot of sense after seeing how fast the raiders go. Losing is very fun :> I just wanted to check to see if I could read up on the game a bit since I couldn’t tell what my mistakes were in order to learn from them.

19

I like nice fractions so I always did 25% for missile or slow boats and 33% for high performance. But yeah I could see doing a bit more if needed. Part of it depends on your tech vs whoever you end up fighting too.

20

The order is in kilometers (km).

2 Likes