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Old 08-04-2013, 02:41 PM   #1
Brian Swartz
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The Galaxy Awaits ... Choose Your Path!(Aurora)

** Author's Note: In the spirit of the sci-fi signup, i.e. the FTL(Grover) and XCOM(Neon Chaos) threads, I present another opportunity. Feel free to sign up here, and join with humanity's first serious reaches into space.**

I made one very brief Aurora thread quite some time back, and while i've learned several times as much as I knew then, I've barely scratched the surface. I've done some test games and am familiar with the basic mechanics of most elements in the game, but I'll definitely be learning more as we go along. From my test games I know enough to get off to a solid start, but many forms of disaster are yet possible.

I expect this game to last centuries, which will give any who choose to participate the option of going through generations of characters.

THE SETTING(** This is all my slightly game-inspired gobbledy-gook, as the game doesn't go into a detailed backstory)

In late 2013, a breakthrough discovery was made. Deep within the earth's mantle and core, a series of new elements was discovered with incredible properties, properties which rendered Newtonian physics obsolete in most fields. These elements soon became known as Trans-Newtonian(TN) materials.

Unfortunately, the lesser angels of humanity's nature made themselves known soon after, as the international community could not agree on how these revolutionary new resources would be controlled and exploited. Every major nation, and many of the minor ones, wanted their piece of the pie and then some. World War III lasted the better part of a decade, and ended with the earth decimated -- less than a tenth of the population survived the fighting. Only when it became apparent that the only possible result of continued nuclear war was the destruction of humanity en masse was an uneasy truce signed.

A few years after the breakout of peace, in 2025, a united government was formed. Clearly mankind could not survive another war -- the only way forward was to do away with the archaic concept of nation-states and join as one race, using the potential of the TN elements to reach into space. A new agency was formed, absurdly named SPACE(Strategic Planning Agency for Collective Endeavor).

SIGN-UPS

The SPACE GLTC(Global Leadership and Training Center) needs you! For those with the courage to be cadets, four career paths are possible, in order of projected needed personnel:

** Naval Officer. Space is big. Many vessels of more types than can be imagined will be needed. Task Force Commanders, Staff Officers, Ship Captains(Warship and/or Commercial), Starfighter Pilots, etc. will be needed at every turn in the coming exploring of the solar system and beyond. Only the bravest need apply for this ever-popular career.

** Ground Forces Officer. No matter how powerful space-based technology becomes, there will always be the need for boots on the ground. Command a battalion, brigade, even a division in the new human army.

** Scientist. Research the cutting-edge TN technologies that will ensure the survival and hegemony of humanity. Lead a research team overseeing millions of personnel to unlock the previously-unthinkable secrets of the universe.

** Civilian Administrator. Progress through the ranks from pointless pocket-protecting, pencil-pushing bureaucrat to oversee the(hopefully) far-flung colonies of humankind in space. Perhaps you might even one day be appointed the governor of Earth, if you play your cards right.

Members of all branches are also eligible, with the right skills, to take part in specialized teams(geological survey, xenological discovery, diplomacy, and espionage).

The following will be needed from all applicants:

Career Path
First Name
Last Name
Gender

The next graduate(5 per year as of now, that will grow considerable over time so there will be tons of space for whoever wants to join). One character per person but a new one will be generated whenever yours dies/retires. There will also be some limited decision-making(i.e., whether to take a job on a project team, choice of assignments within your rank and skill level when available, etc.)

We'll see how it works as we go along, but I'm hoping this will be a lot of fun for everybody. It will be slow without a lot happening at startup, but that will change in time. I'll have a lot of screenshots at the beginning and more periodically later to show what is going on.

I'm working a lot the next few days, so I figured I'd post this now, and then I'll get things going probably sometime on Tuesday.

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Old 08-04-2013, 04:21 PM   #2
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Old 08-04-2013, 10:53 PM   #3
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Old 08-05-2013, 08:12 AM   #4
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Old 08-05-2013, 10:31 AM   #5
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Old 08-05-2013, 10:36 AM   #6
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What is this - a game I've never heard of?
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Old 08-05-2013, 11:03 AM   #7
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Old 08-05-2013, 11:06 AM   #8
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Old 08-05-2013, 12:47 PM   #9
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Old 08-06-2013, 01:42 AM   #10
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Old 08-06-2013, 06:54 PM   #11
Brian Swartz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo
What is this - a game I've never heard of?

You're not alone. It is admittedly a very hard game to get into. PCWorld did a short review in November 2011(a major iteration or two ago). A few quotes to give you an idea of what we're in for here in this adventure:

Quote:
"The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games". This is an accurate description, and your reaction to that statement is a good gauge of your reaction to the game itself.

Quote:
insanely deep, complex, and unforgiving

Quote:
"Why are all my colonists dying on Mars?" Answer: Because I didn't bother to pack any life support gear for them. Aurora is happy to let you dump naked colonists on an airless world, or give a ship orders it doesn't have the fuel to complete, or send a warship into battle with no missiles loaded. I imagine that Aurora giggles in delight when you do this.

Quote:
To provide an idea of how complex Aurora is, understand that in most games of this type, you may research "Missiles" and discover "Fusion Missiles" and then "Anti-Matter Missiles" and so on. In Aurora, you research root technologies, such as warhead types, ECM, fuel efficiency, and so forth, and then you design a specific missile by making selections from many different categories, and then you perform a research project to learn how to build that missile, and then you start factories producing the missiles. I should also note you must design missile launchers and magazines as well, and then put them on an appropriate ship. You must also design the tracking systems to be used by the missiles, and decide which launchers are controlled by which sensors.

It is also, as the screenshots will soon demonstrate, very much like playing a spreadsheet from an interface POV. Some(though I disagree, having played and liked both) have found the interface far more impenetrable than that of Dwarf Fortress(which has 10 or 20 times the following that Aurora does, I'm assuming everyone in this thread has at least heard of DF).

I'm not discouraging anyone away from the game, just saying that it will require effort, a lot of it, in order to really begin enjoying the game at a high level, assuming it's the kind of thing you like to begin with. You are all now part of my journey as one who is fascinated by Aurora(and you don't have to deal with figuring it out anyway to have fun with this thread )

Last edited by Brian Swartz : 08-06-2013 at 06:56 PM.
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Old 08-06-2013, 07:30 PM   #12
Brian Swartz
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Our Story Begins

Upon creating a new game in the universe of Aurora, you will be greeted with this ...



I changed some of the options before creating our adventure, but this is how it starts. Aside from the obvious name of empire, difficulty etc. which require no explanation, the major decision facing us is:

Trans-Newtonian or Conventional Start. Ours is a conventional start(and slightly nerfed at that), i.e. the 'five minutes into the future' feel. A TN start is the 'default' mode, it is how any aliens will start out(meaning we start off behind), and basically represents a world in which TN technology has already transformed society. In a TN game you have a certain amount of ship points and research points which you use to decide what technologies and ships you start off the game with(in our case, being a conventional start, that's none).

Except for a couple of minor changes(no shipyard to begin with, orbital motion for asteroids, random # of jump points from Sol) and the cosmetic name changes, the rest stays the same.

So now we move into the game proper. A fundamental screen that we'll be looking at a lot is this one:



From this far out it looks like a mass of nonsense, but it's a 2D display of all of the bodies(comets, such as Hale-Bopp in the lower left, asteroids, moons, planets, etc.) In the upper left there's the scale(11.1 billion km, that's some serious real estate) and to the left more tabs and options than I'll probably ever use. You can do it other places, but for a number of reasons this is the 'home' screen which I use to advance time from.

Now we'll zoom in to a far more sensible view ...



A fraction of the area, and you'll soon notice this is basically the 'inner system'. The planet orbits out to Mars, and on the right there's enough to see part of the Kuiper Belt. On the bottom the Whipple comet makes it's way inward between Earth and Mars orbits(you can interact with comets the same way you can with anything else, it's just more complicated by the fact that they are often on their way to the outer system and beyond, and in a right big hurry as well).

We can see all of these things because of the Deep Space Tracking Station on Earth, which you always start with. If we had any ships(we don't, and won't for a while), their locations would be displayed in yellow. We'll get to that.

One more from this view to show a further close-up ...



This of course is the Jupiter 'system'. As with the other bodies, all the moons orbit as time advances(increments can be as low as 5 seconds, but most things are set by default for the sanity of the processor to only update at the default 5 days. Combat uses the 5-second interval liberally of course). And for each body, though it is cut off in this screen, you can access more information than you could possibly care about(diameter, orbital period, distance, gravity, atmosphere, etc. ad nauseum) as well as the more vital stuff like what minerals if any are found there, is there a colony and details of that, etc.

I should mention at this juncture that many a campaign has been made just in the Sol system without even trying to do anything else. There's a lot of 'sandbox' features -- you can simply add a tech or bunch of ships or another empire to the game anytime you feel like it. Some interesting stuff has taken place with people using a divided-earth start(pitting the US, Russia, China, Japan etc. against each other in user-created scenarios).

Ok, next up we'll look at some of the economic screens, and then get into assigning a starting character for each of the signups and get this road on the show.
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Old 08-06-2013, 08:06 PM   #13
Brian Swartz
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Now we'll delve a bit into the specifics of exactly what the situation is on Earth as of the beginning of 2025.



All of these screens are from Economics, this one laughably yet accurately being labeled the Summary. Perhaps most significant are the current population and growth rate, and the fact that we have tons of free labor -- almost 45M workers in the manufacturing sector unemployed.

We've got a few research labs, basic maintenance facility and scanner, no fuel, no shipyard -- yeah, there really isn't a lot going on. Yet.



This is the relevant section of the Mining Report, listing the amounts of the 11 TN minerals that are present on Earth. Note the Stockpile column on the right -- yep, we don't have jack. Also, the years to depletion tell us we'll be out of 8 of them by the end of the 21st century even at current rates of excavation. Truth be told this is a pretty crappy amount(it's random with each new game). Often Earth can be richer than this, but them's the breaks.

Obviously, we need to find more elsewhere, and we need to be in a bit of hurry about it. One really important concept that we'll see again and again is the accessibility column. It can, and almost certainly will, happen that a huge deposit is discovered(in the millions of tons) of a vital mineral that will jumpstart the economy -- and it will have a low accessibility. Accessibility of, say. 0.2 means that only 20% of the normal amount is excavated in a year, so particularly bad accessibility involves a ton of deep core drilling and the like and basically makes the deposit, no matter how large, economically unfeasible to develop. In our case, we can only hope that we don't need much Corbomite, Tritanium, and/or Vendarite in the immediate future.

The 11 TN minerals are the engine of the economy. Without them and an adequate supply of cash(more on that in a sec), it will grind to a halt and we won't be able to build anything.



The Industry tab, aka 'where we go to build crap'. There's not a whole lot available to build, and what there is isn't what we need right now. We'll address that in a bit, but we can see that we have 1000 Construction Factories, otherwhise known as Conventional Industry(CI). These are sizable factories left over from the war. No Ordnance Factories(used to build missiles etc.) and no Fighter Factories.

At the bottom, you'll notice we can divide production up by percentages(one could, in theory, have something like 20 projects going on each with 5% of the industrial base working on them) and the cost on the lower left. For each ton of TN minerals it also costs 1 'wealth'(which I think of as 1000 credits), the direct financial cost of producing whatever. 240 total in this case as listed for a Financial Centre.

Enough of the technical briefing for now, it's time to find out just where our new leaders will land ...
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Old 08-06-2013, 09:28 PM   #14
Brian Swartz
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UNDERSTANDING YOUR RANK

Before assignments are handed out, it's important to know what your rank means and how it changes. Scientists and Civilian Administrators don't have a rank per se, but they do have an Administrative rating. For Scientists, they have the ability to oversee a maximum of 5 labs for each administrative rank, so a scientist rated 5 could oversee 25, etc. More experienced, higher-rated scientists will therefore tend to get the larger, more difficult, and often more useful projects as they are the ones who can complete them in a reasonable amount of time. For Civilian Administrators, a certain minimum administrative rank is recommended(which for our purposes becomes a RP requirement) before taking on certain jobs. If you look back up at the Summary from Earth, the third line down on the left is 'Administrative Level Required: 2' which means a civilian administrator with rank 2 or higher is needed to be Earth's governor.

The military branches are different. New academy graduates come into the system from the bottom and then are promoted when needed. Using Ground Forces as an example, their ranks are as follows:

Colonel
Brigadier General
Major General
Lieutenant General. When the ratio of Colonels to Brigadier Generals becomes too high, a Colonel will be promoted, and so on up the chain.

Naval Officers works the same way, with a deeper rank chain as there will be more of them:

Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Rear Admiral(Lower Half)
Rear Admiral(Upper Half)
Vice Admiral
Admiral
Fleet Admiral

As of now, there are no officers ranked above Brigadier General and Rear Admiral(Lower Half) and won't be until more recruits come into the system and 'push' them up the chain.

With that in mind, the FOFC branch of the GLAT announces the following commissions. As new recruits, all are currently 21 years of age. Further sign-ups will only be added as new officers come out of the academy, not from the startup group.

NAVAL OFFICERS

Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive
Age: 23
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2023
Current Assignment: None(only staff officers at Fleet HQ are currently required, and a ranking of Captain or higher is required for those).
Fleet Movement Initiative: 122(a higher score aids a commander in combat movement)
Bonuses: None
Personality Traits: Conscientious, Faith in others
Promotion Score: 61(20th out of 20 Lt. Commanders -- suffice to say the random number generator was not your friend)

Note: the personality traits are there soley for RP reasons and have no actual game effect(though we may well use them and it can certainly help to flesh out the characters). In his brief career of two years, Chip so far is a really nice guy and a really crappy naval officer. But most of his career is ahead of him ... hopefully.

Cmdr. Tell Perj
Age: 31
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2015
Current Assignment: None
Fleet Movement Initiative: 131
Bonuses: Fighter Combat(20%), Logistics(15%), Fighter Operations(10%), Intelligence(10%), Espionage(10%)
Personality Traits: Flexible and pragmatic, Good judge of character, Impoverished, risk-taker
Promotion Score: 472(4th out of 7 Commanders)

Tell got the opposite end of the spectrum as our highest-ranking naval officer.

Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen
Age: 23
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2023
Current Assignment: None
Fleet Movement Initiative: 182
Bonuses: Crew Training(25), Fighter Combat Bonus(15%), Xenology(10%), Logistics(10%)
Personality Traits: Aggressive
Promotion Score: 197(9th out of 20 Lt. Cmdrs.)

I'm real interested in where Nielsen got his Xenology expertise inasmuch as no sign of alien life has ever been detected.

Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale
Age: 23
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2023
Current Assignment: None
Fleet Movement Initiative: 192
Bonuses: Survey(10%), Fighter Combat(10%), Terraforming(10%), Logistics(10%)
Personality Traits: Flexible and Pragmatic
Promotion Score: 202(8th out of 20 Lt. Cmdrs.)


GROUND FORCES OFFICERS

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve
Age: 30
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2016
Current Assignment: Commanding Officer, 12th Low Tech Armour Battalion
Bonuses: Ground Combat(10%)
Personality Traits: Good motivator, Insightful, Resourceful
Promotion Score: 125(2nd of 2 Brig Gen)

Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone
Age: 27
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2019
Current Assignment: Commanding Officer, 11th Low Tech Armour Battalion; Commanding Officer, all Human Ground Forces
Bonuses: Ground Combat(20%)
Personality: Intolerant, Observant, Punctual, Rude
Promotion Score: 425(1st of 2 Brig Gen)

Well isn't that special -- Dolph Stallone is in charge of defending humanity, in terms of the ground forces. And she just had to be intolerant and rude to go with it. An auspicious beginning.


CIVILIAN ADMINISTRATORS

Slick Willie(4)
Age: 21
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2025(today)
Current Assignment: None
Bonuses: Factory Production(15%), Shipbuilding(10%), Population Growth(10%), Ground Unit Construction(10%)
Personality Traits: Calm, Indifferent, Rude

** For governors, I'm using a quick-n-dirty election simulation which leads to the best candidates have a somewhat better chance to win. Slick Willie finished a distant third out of four candidates, with Lena Dungey(the only woman) beating out Terrence Forson by less than 2% of the vote for the job of first governor of Earth.


SCIENTISTS

Deacon Palmer(3)
Age: 21
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2025(today)
Current Assignment: Lead on Trans-Newtonian Technology Team(5 labs)
Field of Expertise: Construction/Production(10%)
Personality Traits: Innovative, Poor Family, Tolerant

** As it turns out, Palmer is the most important scientific mind at this point in history. We've discovered the TN elements but don't know how to use them yet. Investigation into practical applications for widespread use is being supervised by Dr. Deacon Palmer and is considered far more important than any other task -- therefore he and his subordinates have been given full reign over all of the currently available laboratories and the five million technicians, assistants, and various other support personnel. He is currently the only top scientist who specializes in Contruction & Production, which made it an easy choice: anyone else would have taken far longer to get results.

Dr. Palmer's report is scheduled to be completed sometime in the summer of 2028, three and a half years from now.
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Old 08-06-2013, 09:45 PM   #15
Tellistto
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Quote:
Cmdr. Tell Perj
Age: 31
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2015
Current Assignment: None
Fleet Movement Initiative: 131
Bonuses: Fighter Combat(20%), Logistics(15%), Fighter Operations(10%), Intelligence(10%), Espionage(10%)
Personality Traits: Flexible and pragmatic, Good judge of character, Impoverished, risk-taker
Promotion Score: 472(4th out of 7 Commanders)

Tell got the opposite end of the spectrum as our highest-ranking naval officer.

Too bad on some of those stats. Lowest Fleet Init of the bunch. Must have been a fighter jock and intel type guy coming through the ranks. Impoverished.... Let's hope nobody tries to bribe this poor dude!

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Old 08-06-2013, 11:46 PM   #16
Brian Swartz
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SPACE HQ
Jan 1st, 2025

Be careful what you ask for . . . *

Earth's new governor-elect Lena Dungey could not help but consider her place in history, fragile though it was, looking around at her new office. * She had barely won with 29. 6% of the vote over three 'more qualified' men, including rival Terrence Forson who was the choice of over 28% and whose help she would need now. * Humanity would now look to her as the first director of SPACE and leader of a new more peaceful and prosperous future in what was already being called the 'Trans-Newtonian Age'.

500 million souls. * So many problems faced them. * Nearly half(44+ million) of the manufacturing sector had no work. * The miners were busy, but for all the excitement about the newly discovered TN minerals, it would not take long to exhaust their supply. * The report she held just now indicated tritanium was the most plenteous, but also was so difficult to get to that not much would be recovered. * The fact that it wouldn't run out for almost 600 years was of little consequence as a result. * Corbomite and vendarite were equally inaccessible. *

Other minerals were easier to find, and would run out quickly. * In less than a generation, all of the neutronium, boronide, and corundium were projected to be exhausted -- eight minerals would be gone within her lifetime more than likely. * While there was nothing she could do about it directly now, she looked around the room at Forson, Jayson Riese, and Slick Willie, and made it clear to all of them that humanity's number one priority was finding supplies beyond Earth. * This world would not be humanity's sole home long into the future. * If hadn't found and prepared to begin exploiting veins elsewhere in the solar system within a decade, SPACE will have grievously and perhaps fatally failed humankind.

Discussion of the direction of research was very short. * It was obvious that not enough was known about the TN materials, potential uses, chemical properties, what new industries or manufacturing techniques might be gleaned from them. * Other than the fact that they existed and had exotic properties, little else was certain. * Dr. *Deacon Palmer was clearly the foremost expert in matters of physical materials, and he was given carte blanche with the five research complexes and corresponding millions of support staff at SPACE's disposal to find practical applications, and find them quickly. * Even preliminary findings were expected to take nearly four years, the initial target date being the summer of 2028.

It was also clear that the military, though what use it might be in the new age was unclear, needed more leadership. * The Navy needed several more staff officers to be prepared for a proper command structure to be in place when needed, and the Army had three of it's fifteen battalions, limited as they were, operating without proper commanders as it was, to say nothing of any future growth. *

Director-Governor Dungey's final order of her first day on the job then, was for the industrial sector to work on expanding the academy and ramping up recruitment of the best and brightest to serve in human armed forces. * It was the Roman Cicero who said wisely centuries ago, "If you want peace, prepare for war. " *Peace was indeed mankind's desire after so much destruction, but it could not be assumed that wish was even possible. * Was space empty, or were there even greater threats in it's unimaginably vast expanse? *The former conclusion was assumed by many, but as with all assumptions, it was dangerous and unprovable. *

Thus the human race moved cautiously into a new era. * Lena would not sleep well for some time. *
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Old 08-07-2013, 07:41 AM   #17
Coffee Warlord
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Swartz View Post
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen
Age: 23
Commissioned: Jan 1st, 2023
Current Assignment: None
Fleet Movement Initiative: 182
Bonuses: Crew Training(25), Fighter Combat Bonus(15%), Xenology(10%), Logistics(10%)
Personality Traits: Aggressive
Promotion Score: 197(9th out of 20 Lt. Cmdrs.)

I'm real interested in where Nielsen got his Xenology expertise inasmuch as no sign of alien life has ever been detected.

There are some things we in the Fleet keep from even our political leaders.

...and trust me, you'd find the answer fairly appalling anyway.
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Old 08-07-2013, 08:26 AM   #18
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Wherever the character is needed to help move the story with a player instead of NPC: be it scientist, politician, or military
Sterling
Silvers
Female - it's a sausage fest right now so I'll mix it up

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Old 08-07-2013, 09:30 AM   #19
Brian Swartz
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Sounds good. There's about a 2 or 3-to-one ratio of men to women in the game anyway, so that's not necessarily a problem. Silvers will be put in as the next female leader generated ...

I can only say that LT Nielsen has me both chuckling and making sure I have my tinfoil hat ready ...

My goal here is to do updates as regularly as possible, which means at the beginning there won't be a whole lot in them. I'll do every two years of game time until enough things happen to break them up(when stuff starts happening, it will becomemuch slower). I went through the first two years last night, so that'll be up next. That timeframe works well as it's what I'm using for the typical military tour of duty.
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Old 08-07-2013, 09:37 AM   #20
Brian Swartz
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AS THE SOLAR SYSTEM TURNS ...

Such events happen all the time, but it somehow seemed significant that by the third day of the year the comet Crommelin had rounded the Sun and was on it’s long journey back towards the outer reaches of the known system. By summer it was passing through the Kuiper Belt, continuing on it’s 27-year journey. Whipple headed off in the other direction, while Faye and Wolf-Harrington were nearing the end of their latest trip. Such is the rhythm of the universe.

Administrative staff occupied themselves with relatively small goings-on ... a new promising naval officer was commissioned, without knowing for certain if there’d ever be a ship for her to captain. Captain Louis Meola, Survey Staff Officer, soon developed a serious medical problem and doctors reports came across Dungey’s desk on a daily basis. And there was the long wait –
what would happen with Dr. Palmer’s research team?

Lt. Cmdr. Lucius Patino seems more interested in cultivating political allies than anything else, which may be a wise strategy in these times, positioning himself for future action if there is opportunity.

** September 2025 – It has become apparent that Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone has been hard at work developing friends in high places – she finds herself even more distinguished among her peers than before due to her increasing political connections.

** May 2026 – Col. Woodrow Husar’s commission gives the last of the battalions a qualified commander. Naval staff officers is still a severe shortage and will be for years.

2027 BI-ANNUAL REPORT

The population on earth has grown to 522.8 million, staying steady at about 2.5% per year, although it's dropping just slightly. The expansion to the academy is set to finish in about two months, and for now one expansion seems that it will be sufficient. And we still have a year and a half or thereabouts remaining waiting for Dr. Deacon Palmer's report.

** Normally I'll put an update here with the position of the various officers and leaders, but as time is running short for the moment I'll post that this evening.
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Old 08-07-2013, 10:12 AM   #21
path12
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This looks like the kind of game I would totally be into but could never put the time in to learn, so I'm thinking of this as a tutorial of sorts. Looking forward to it.
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Old 08-07-2013, 02:55 PM   #22
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Old 08-07-2013, 06:06 PM   #23
Brian Swartz
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path12, or anyone else in that boat for that matter -- excellent! Feel free to ask any questions you have, and a conventional start is good for that as it allows me to roll out game concepts piecemeal. One of my goals was to be able to do that. I've seen a couple places where somebody thought it was a good idea to start TN right away and try to introduce people to the game ... information overload is a kind way of putting what happens.

** Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive is not doing well, to put it mildly. 23rd out of 23, no current assignment other than endless flight/fleet combat simulations.
** Cmdr. Tell Perj is 4th out of 8 Commanders. Assuming that he doesn't improve his currently-rock-bottom political savvy, it may be a long time yet, if ever, before he makes Captain.
** Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen is 10th out of 23. As with most of the rest of the FOFC officers, he's been better than some of the new recruits and worse than others, basically treading water waiting for something to happen. To be fair, the whole Navy is doing that really. We find his comments about what 'we in the Fleet' do to be hilarious inasmuch as there is no Fleet. There isn't even a shipyard to build a fleet, or technical plans to build a shipyard with which to build a fleet, or a team with the requisite expertise to draw up technical ... you get the idea.
** Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale is 9th.

** Brig. Gen Path Twelve has been narrowly surpassed by Annette Burkhard, who is one year his junior and was just today promoted to Brigadier General. He is third out of the three to achieve that rank, and is the commanding officer of the 13th Low Tech Armour Battalion. Unlike the other two, there are concerns about his long-term health ...
** Brig. Gen Dolph Stallone is by far the most accomplished of the three generals, and will remain with the 11th Low Tech Armor Battalion for another tour. She is also the de facto head of the human armed forces.

** Slick Willie has little to do aside from dry discussions of projected developments and wishing he were Director-Governor.

** Dr. Deacon Palmer remains in charge of the Trans-Newtonian Tech research team. Right now, he has the most important job in the world -- literally.

Sterling Silvers and Sonny Dean are in the Academy, studying to be approved and commissioned to some vital or even irrelevant assignment.
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Old 08-07-2013, 08:44 PM   #24
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** Slick Willie has little to do aside from dry discussions of projected developments and wishing he were Director-Governor.

Thank God for interns and cigars! Now is the time to be enjoying a job of no consequence!
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Old 08-07-2013, 08:56 PM   #25
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Old 08-07-2013, 10:21 PM   #26
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** Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive is not doing well, to put it mildly. 23rd out of 23, no current assignment other than endless flight/fleet combat simulations.

Can we just use him on our first test flight and leave the airlocks open or something?
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Old 08-07-2013, 10:34 PM   #27
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I, for one, am unable to play a conventional start in this game. As it happens, every time I try to do so I get several errors after 2 or 3 days simming. 3020 and 3021 errors of varying kinds just roll through. If I close all the game windows, a different error pops up that forces a forced restart of the computer to make it go away.

However, if I start a TN game, I have no troubles at all. So I'm not real sure what to do. I'd like to start as a Conventional Empire just to mess around and see what's possible to start, but alas, it won't let me.

Now to figure out how to get the ships built out of the Shipyard TG and actually doing something useful, like surveying my home system!

Tell, aka non political junkie.
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Old 08-07-2013, 10:46 PM   #28
Brian Swartz
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That's strange. There's definitely a significant amount of bugs etc. in the game, but I wouldn't think something like a conventional start would cause it and I've never seen it. *shrug*

BTW, on the getting ships to do something useful, go to Task Groups(9th icon/button from the left on the System View, I don't think there's a hotkey for it or if there is I don't know what it is, and go to the Special Orders & Organization Tab halfway down the screen). You can set up new task groups, move ships between them, etc. there, then issuing orders can happen on the first tab(Task Group Orders).

Hope that's of use.
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Old 08-07-2013, 11:21 PM   #29
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We scientists who are the most important people should be made to feel like that by Victoria Secret models!
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Old 08-07-2013, 11:40 PM   #30
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We scientists who are the most important people should be made to feel like that by Victoria Secret models!

Sorry, we army guys get them.
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Old 08-07-2013, 11:49 PM   #31
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3.3.2027 – Military Academy finished. For the next year-plus, the miners are charged with stockpiling as many minerals as they can, pending completion of the Palmer team’s research.

Mid-March – Col. Sterling Silvers is commissioned, and observers consider her the best of the 15 Colonels right out of the Academy. She has a great skill in Ground Combat(30%) and is very good at Ground Forces Training(100). No other Army officer can match either of those abilities in probably the two most important categories for the job. Silvers clearly is headed for great things, and should be the next general. She is known as an Atheist, Observant, Moody, and Gloomy – political skills are not her forte, and will probably be her downfall if anything is.

In May, the Academy finally commissioned somebody worse than Chip Overdrive, who is now no longer the laughing stock of the Navy. Ok, at least not as much the laughing stock of the Navy. Before the month was out, they found a second naval officer of like ability – were they dragging the bottom of the rivers for these guys now?

In September, Mitchell Aull, a master of the political game, is promoted to Captain and assigned to Fleet HQ as the Intelligence Officer. Three of the seven staff positions there are now filled.

Late March 2028 – As the team was approaching the time to work on their final report, Dr. Deacon Palmer was noted to have increased his expertise markedly in Construction & Production as a result of his work on the project(now a 15% bonus). Although there isn’t enough time left
for it have a huge impact, this is expected to accelerate the reports’ arrival by about two weeks.

Late June 2028 – As expected, Sterling Silvers did not wait long as has been promoted to Brigadier General. His abilities – despite having not received an actual command yet – have been so widely recognized that he has succeeded BG Dolph Stallone as the top ground forces commander.

July 11th, 2028 – The Palmer team’s report was delivered to SPACE HQ the previous night, and this day(and many to come as well) would be spent poring over it.

Lena Dungey and the three deputy directors soon lost their powers of speech, able only to gurgle and blink and grunt in response to what they found. The high-level summary of the report detailed an unbelievable finding and two inescapable conculsions:

** The TN minerals were more revolutionary than anyone had imagined, or could have. Their properties were so revolutionary that:

** Earth’s economy was obsolete. Not merely parts of it. All of it, in it’s entirety. A complete conversion would be required to take advantadge of the fact that
** New technologies in all fields, previously unconsidered and un-thought of, would now be possible.

ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING

The present economic paradigm was based on large-scale factories which could be adjusted to whatever needed to be built. In order to unlock the potential of TN technology, this way of doing things had to go. The Palmer report detailed the need for dedicated facilities that specialized in a particular branch of manufacturing, taking advantadge of the amazing properties of the new minerals. An astounding increase was possible in what was possible to
produce:

** 10-fold increase in mining output from converting factories to mines
** 20-fold increase with conversions to refineries
** 10-fold increase for conversions to either multi-purpose construction factories, ordnance factories, or fighter factories(not that there is any immediate use for the latter pair)

It was clear that whatever was decided, this conversion was absolutely necessary and would need to be a major focus of efforts in the coming years.

In addition, there were many more types of facilities possible. New, modern research labs could be built; orbital shipyards of either commercial or naval focus: automated mines which would require no labor at all, freeing up the work force for other tasks, and many others which would have no imminent value but helpful potentially down the line. The options for industrial construction were only four as of yesterday: today, with the schematics outlined in this report, the list has expanded six-fold to 24 ...



It is clear that it will be rarely if ever that the factories sit idle in the future as they have for over a year ...

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

The expansion of research possibilities was similar in scale. TN technology provided the possibility of not just a revolutionized present: rather, that was merely the tip of the iceberg. In broad terms, the Palmer report outlined the following areas of potential advancement:

** Rudimentary terraforming possibilities, based either on orbiting vessels or land-based installations
** Potential increases in the efficiency of all manner of production above the incredible gains already described
** Future abilities to mine asteroids or convert fuel from the gases in the upper atmospheres of gas giants
** Improved materials for better armor, and the possibility of kinetic shields on spacecraft
** Space-based weapons of several varieties of significant reach and potential damage, several orders of magnitude beyond the only current try(ICBMs). Some had a ballistic base, others were based on focused energy
** A wide variety of specialized modules for potential spacecraft, including cryogenic transport for colonizing other worlds, advanced cargo and storage systems, orbital habitats, salvaging any derelict spacecraft that might potentially be encountered, and many more
** Improved power-generating technology to allow significant amounts to be produced in small enough size to be useful on a starship
** Higher power output and efficiency than current engine technology could allow for
** Improved sensors optimized for space of various types
** Scanners that could detect mineral deposits and/or gravitational anomalies
** Etc.

Like the Manufacturing Ministry, Reserach & Development had no lack of options to consider.

All of this left Dungey and the three deputy directors quite overwhelmed. They needed to move immediately, but weren’t quite sure what the right direction was, so Dungey ordered the Manufacturing Ministry to concentrate half it’s efforts on upgrading the factories, another quarter each to converting some to mines and some to fuel refineries. That would get some progress moving and hold down demand for action while a more detailed long-term plan was formed over the rest of the month. As for the research team, the top priority had been and still was to find TN minerals beyond Earth. Unfortunately none of the top scientists had particularly noteworthy knowledge of sensors and the associated instruments, so the most talented overall – Dr. Wayne Sabagh – was tapped to lead a team investigating ship-mounted geological scanning packages. All 5 laboratories were tasked over to this effort for the time being, which was expected to take until next May.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Grover
Can we just use him on our first test flight and leave the airlocks open or something?

All in favor?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ntndeacon
We scientists who are the most important people should be made to feel like that by Victoria Secret models!

No, just no. Shut up and get back to work.
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Old 08-08-2013, 12:40 AM   #32
Brian Swartz
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SPACE HQ
August 1, 2028

Executive Order of Director Lena Dungey -- For Immediate Release

Strategic Development Plan

** The Manufacturing Ministry will focus half of our industrial output on converting to the more modern and specialized facilities. Initially, 34% will work on converting 715 of our 1000 units to construction factories; 1% on converting 10 to fighter factories; 3% on converting 50 to Ordnance Factories; 8% on converting 150 to Mines; and 4% on converting 75 to Fuel Refineries. When one of these projects is completed, the remaining capacity will be re-allocated among the uncompleted projects until the entire conversion is complete, but the ratio is designed to allow all of them to complete as close to the same time as possible.

This should result in a more than 7-fold increase to general purpose production, 50% increase in fuel and mineral extraction, and allow a modest but significant ability to produce ammunition and fighters should they be needed. This conversion is expected to take nearly 40 years(Sept. 2066) at current levels of production(1 facility has already been converted and is operating well at the new TN standard as a construction factory), but should accelerate quickly as more and more of the conversion is completed.

** The remaining 50% will be divided into the two most critical needs of new production: more research labs, and an initial shipyard for general exploration and transport vessels. Each of these will require nearly nine years at current levels, but should see the same benefits of increased construction rate as the economic conversion proceeds.

** Given that the geological sensors are expected to be ready several years ahead of the time when there will be a shipyard available to build a ship that can use them, the decision has been made to divide our research efforts for the time being. Dr. Sabagh will retain two of the five labs for his work(this should still allow him to complete the project in a bit under two years, well ahead of it's usefulness). With resources always a concern, Dr. Santo will oversee a single lab investigating ways of improving fuel efficiency, Dr. Palmer will oversee a project aimed at improving the speed of construction yet further, and Dr. Grimmett will be developing a larger fuel storage module aiming at eventually increasing the range of potential ships.

** For his team's monumental and unprecedented contribution at this critical moment in human history, Dr. Deacon Palmer has been awarded the title of 'Pioneer' for his part in revolutionizing human civilization.
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Old 08-08-2013, 01:54 AM   #33
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Does that mean I get a coonskin cap to go with the Victoria Secret model?
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Old 08-08-2013, 08:38 AM   #34
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Does that mean I get a coonskin cap to go with the Victoria Secret model?

You can get back to your desk and keep working so we can blast Chip Overdrive to a spacy doom.
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Old 08-08-2013, 08:55 AM   #35
Coffee Warlord
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You can get back to your desk and keep working so we can blast Chip Overdrive to a spacy doom.

Now now, The Fleet (tm) can make perfectly good use of all officers.

I'm presently in the works of submitting Operation Solar Cartography to the Admirality. It's primary mission will be a manned mission to explore the inner workings of our sun.

...and I have just the officer in mind for command.

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Old 08-08-2013, 09:08 AM   #36
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the construction we are working on is synthetic models. not as good as the real thing but we all gotta tighten our belts I guess.
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Old 08-08-2013, 11:08 AM   #37
Brian Swartz
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Quote:
I'm presently in the works of submitting Operation Solar Cartography to the Admirality. It's primary mission will be a manned mission to explore the inner workings of our sun.

...and I have just the officer in mind for command.

Humanity's doomed ...

November 2028Sonny Dean is the first new civilian administrator appointed since the formation of SPACE nearly four years ago. His greatest talent is in Espionage(25%) with smaller abilities in Factory Production(15%), Shipbuilding(10%), and Mining(5%)

BI-ANNUAL REPORT, 2029

2029 Election Results: Lena Dungey will be back for another term as Governor of Earth, in a bit of a surprise. It was thought that with the outcry from the manufacturing sector(unemployment there is continuing to climb, now at 49.4%) that a change in leadership might appease them. Nevertheless, Dungey is back for a second term and has made some adjustments to account for this.

As painful as it is to do, the new research labs have become a lower priority, reduced from 25% to 10% of available factory space. 10% will go to new construction factories, and the final 5% to speed up work on the shipyard.

At present the economic conversion is set to finish in April 2064(already two-plus years has been chopped off the time) and is just under 1% completed. Dr. Sabagh’s research into geological sensors is slated to finish in July of 2030, with the new shipyard reaching completion in June 2035. For at least the next couple of years, Dungey’s main job will be monitoring the situation
and making needed adjustments, but no major devolopments seem imminent.

Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive still has no notable skills to report, and is 26th out of 30.
Cmdr. Tell Perj is 3rd of 10 Commanders
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen – 9th
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale – 8th

Brig. Gen. Path Twelve – 4th out of 4 Brigadier Generals, CO of 14th Low Tech Armour Battalion
Brig. Gen. Dolph Stallone – 2nd out of 4 Brigadier Generals, CO of 12th Low Tech Armour Battalion
Brig. Gen. Sterling Silvers – 1st out of 4 Brigadier Generals, CO of 11th Low Tech Armour Battalion, top-ranking Army officer

Slick Willie(4) – Deputy Director, Space HQ,
Sonny Dean(1) – no current assignment

Pioneer Deacon Palmer – Assigned to researching ways to increase construction rate
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Old 08-08-2013, 12:34 PM   #38
Brian Swartz
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June 2029Rob Nielsen’s political connections have improved(5%).

August – A scientist had to retire due to medical problems, following up a training accident and another medical issue costing two naval officers earlier in the year. Is this just coincidence, or is somebody or something sabotaging the leadership?

Late OctoberSterling Silvers has been promoted to Major General, becoming the first human to ever achieve that rank ...

July 11th, 203Wayne Sabagh’s research team has completed work on the geological survey sensor.

With the shipyard less than four years away from completion, it’s time to work on designing a ship capable of using it. Ship design is a big part of any 4X, and in the case of Aurora I like a comment the primary moderator over at their forums made: ask 4 Aurora players to design a 'missile cruiser' and you'll get 8 different designs. I might add that all of them may well have good arguments for their own design depending on the situation. In this case it'll be a bit more simple, but there's still several things that need to be done. Here's the basic ship design screen ...



Already we've started a new class(accepting the default name of Essex, though this can be changed at whim), changed the hull type to Geological Survey Vessel(this is completely cosmetic, you can have a 1000-ton Dreadnought or a 1 million-ton destroyer escort if you wish), and already we have a problem. The summary near the bottom shows a speed of 1k km/s(no primary engines, only maneuvering thrusters) and there aren't any in the components list to add. Yet we do have basic engine technology at game start, and the Geological Survey Sensor is there ...

This is because items with multiple choices require you to design a specific variant. A specific kind of engine has to be designed and prototyped, while the geological sensor is a one-size-fits-all technology. There are number of different kinds of technology that has to be designed specifically this way, ...



Most of them, like the Active Sensors required to mount any kind of effective missile-based weapons system shown here, we lack the technology to build even the most basic version of. Proceeding to engines however ...



There's five fields to select, but we only have choices in two of them. The first is the second from the top, Power/Efficiency modifiers. Basically, high power means low efficiency(a military engine), low power engines are high-efficiency commercial engines, which is what we want for the moment to conserve fuel until we have a better handle on the off-world situation. The bottom field is for Engine Size. A larger engine is more durable in combat(but if their weapons are hitting your engine, you are in trouble anyway), costs a little more, and is more fuel-efficient. We've chosen the biggest we can go(50 HS, 1 HS= 50 tons so this is a 2500-ton engine, any engine 25 HS or more is commercial, the smaller ones are military). 5 HS(250 tons) is the default, though they can be as small as 1 HS. However, that would use almost double the fuel. Essentially here we are accepting a(much) larger engine size, and also an larger ship size, for a ship that is more fuel-efficient which is important for range and resource conservation.



Here is our research screen, where we can see that engine has a very small research cost in comparison to most others(50 RP, TN Technology was a 5k RP cost by comparison). This is where we create research projects and assign a number of labs and a project lead.

Dr. Ignacio Bavaro will only take a few months – until the end of September – to get the new engine prototype ready.

Early SeptKen McKay promoted to Commander. He wasn't at the top of the list, but officers get a higher 'promotion bonus' each year they remain at a rank and aren't promoted. His sheer time of service moved him above a couple of more highly qualified officers in this case.

Sept. 21st – Ignacio Bravo’s team completes work on the new engine

Back at our design central, we add one of these new massive 2500-ton engines to the ship ...



We can see that the new engine takes up the majority of the space, this ship is little more than a ship with skin, a few instruments, and a place for the crew to operate. However, there are still some issues.

** Intended Deployment Time: 3 months(from the summary on the bottom). If we exceed this operational time, morale will suffer and this will impact survey time(and maybe accuracy, I'm not certain). For some ships, low morale doesn't have an in-game effect but I still consider it exploity to ignore it and don't abuse it for RP reasons.

** There usually will be a listed range at the bottom. There isn't any at the moment because there's no fuel storage(components list on the right). If we build and launch this ship as is, it won't be able to go anywhere because it has no fuel. That's bad.

** In the lower right(Design Errors) it says 'Freighters' require at least one Engineering Spaces(they store maintenance supplies). Our ship is being referred to as a freighter simply because of it's size. In the summary it lists MSP 0(zero maintenance supplies) and Max Repair 100 MSP on the third line. Now as a commercial vessel we could get away with low maintenance supplies since in game terms they don't suffer maintenance failures, but again for RP reasons I still have enough on board to cover the maximum repair.

So after adding Engineering Spaces, upping our deployment time to 2 years, and adding the smallest fuel storage tank we have(10k liters), our final design is complete:



Our speed is down to 68 km/s(by comparison, the 70s-era Voyager probes reached a top recorded speed of 93 km/s, they were much smaller so this is actually better in terms of performance). Deployment is up as mentioned, we have 103 MSP which is enough for this ship, and the fuel will give us a range of 5.5 billion km, by which time we'd have exceeded the deployment time anyway. The cost of the ship to produce is in the top line(201.2 BP).

A little over three years is left on the clock until the shipyard is set to be ready to begin construction, in January 2034.

Geological surveying is a two-step process. Boots on the ground are required in the form of a five-person team which will sometimes find minerals the orbital scanners missed. We also need a second ship therefore which will transport teams, unless we want to use the survey ship for double-duty which will slow down it's ability to move on to other system bodies.

Using then the same engine, deployment time, etc. just without the sensors we come up with this design for the Lexington-class Shuttle:

Code:
Lexington class Shuttle 3,200 tons 35 Crew 68.4 BP TCS 64 TH 5 EM 0 78 km/s Armour 1-19 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0 MSP 13 Max Repair 5 MSP Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Spare Berths 1 5 EP Commercial Conventional Engine (1) Power 5 Fuel Use 8.84% Signature 5 Exp 5% Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 6.4 billion km (942 days at full power) This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

The Lexington class is nearly as large as the Essex class, but requires only a tiny fraction of the maintenance supplies and costs roughly a third as much to build. Most of this is because the geological scanner is so expensive and maintenance-heavy as an advanced, specialized instrument pack. This is also why we didn't add more scanners to increase the speed, as the cost of doing so would have been prohibitive.
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Old 08-08-2013, 02:02 PM   #39
Brian Swartz
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2031 BI-ANNUAL REPORT

Population: 570m, 58.6m unemployed and rising
Fuel: 6.65m liters
Economic Conversion: 8.2% completed(June 2054)
Shipyard: 40% completed(November 2033)
Research Lab: 17% completed(February 2043)

Mineral Stockpiles: Tritanium is the biggest concern, all of the others continue to rise. Tritanium is holding steady at just under 500 tons, there’s still 114k tons left to be mined but progress will be slow due to the very low accessibility. Meanwhile the boronide veins are projected to be depleted in less than five and a half years, though that’s not really as bad as at sounds given that it isn’t being used for anything yet.

In September the research teams of Dr. Brandon Grimmett(a larger fuel tank module) and Dr. Santo Makar(increased fuel efficiency techniques) are due to present their reports, with the other two ongoing projects still three or more years away.

Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive – 33rd out of 36
Cmdr. Tell Perj – 4th out of 12
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen – 9th
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale – 13th

Brig. Gen Path Twelve – 5th out of 5, CO 1st Low Tech Infantry Battalion
Brig. Gen Dolph Stallone – 2nd out of 5, CO 13th Low Tech Armour Battalion
Maj. Gen. Sterling Silvers – only MG in human history, CO 11th Low Tech ArmourBattalion

Slick Willie(4) – Deputy Director, SPACE HQ
Sonny Dean(1) – No current assignment

Pioneer Dr. Deacon Palmer – Continuing work on increasing construction speed(late 2037
est.)

Last edited by Brian Swartz : 08-08-2013 at 02:03 PM.
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Old 08-08-2013, 05:13 PM   #40
sterlingice
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Is the first ship required to be named the "Enterprise"?

SI
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Old 08-08-2013, 05:55 PM   #41
Coffee Warlord
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Now that LtCdr Nielsen has his political connections, he can go back to studying those aliens The Fleet totally don't have stashed in Starbase Gamma IV, the starbase we totally don't have.

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Old 08-09-2013, 12:17 AM   #42
Grover
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I am an incredible waste of Naval space. Amazing.
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Old 08-09-2013, 01:30 AM   #43
Brian Swartz
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Quote:
Is the first ship required to be named the "Enterprise"?

It can be if there's enough support behind that, but actually there's a pretty cool feature in the game that I didn't get to in the design discussion for autonaming ships. They can be named individually whatever we feel like(I'm thinking if any sign-up characters are the first CO they can pick the name) but can also be assigned a 'name type' which the game will pick an auto-name from. There's a ton of types available, somewhere in the vicinity of 120-150 of them, anywhere from alphabetical to thematic stuff like birds, mountains, etc. to various real-life water navies to warhammer 40k stuff. Often scout classes will be named after the 'famous explorers' type, etc.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Grover
I am an incredible waste of Naval space. Amazing.

Hey, it takes skill, after a fashion, to be this bad. Not everyone can do it. Ok, maybe everyone could, but not many do.
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Old 08-09-2013, 11:08 AM   #44
Brian Swartz
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September 16th, 2031 – Dr. Grimmett’s research team completes a prototype for a large fuel storage tank. The space is given to Dr. Palmer’s team(construction speed) to accelerate their progress.

September 25th – Dr. Matar’s team announces new techniques have been discovered which permit a 10% increase in fuel efficiency across the board. His team gets to work on a new engine prototype incorporating these ideas.

November – Tritanium stockpiles have gradually declined, only by a few tons this year but it seems to be increasing. Some(4%) of the industrial capacity is switched from factory conversion to mine conversion to begin addressing this shortfall.

November 6th – The new engine is ready and is incorporated into the Essex and Lexington designs. The range of the Essex class ships is now 6.2b km. Dr. Makar begins work on increasing engine power, and Dr. Grimmett starts a new project aimed at improving the storage capacity for maintenance supplies on starships.

Jan 2032 – Another review of the mineral situation shows the tritanium stockpile has stabilized again, so the new allocations will hold for the time being.

May 2032 – Tritanium is beginning to decline again, so a new larger adjustment is made. Also, Dr. Palmer has increased his prowess at C&P research yet again(20%).

2033 BI-ANNUAL REPORT

Space has a new Director as the by-laws require Lena Dungey to step down for at least one term after two consecutive tours, and it probably would have happened anyway due to her declining health. 29-year-old Slick Willie was the landslide choice to replace her. He is expected to focus more on factory production and population growth, less on shipbuilding efficiency and mining, in general.

Population: 595.1m(63.5m unemployed)
Economic Conversion: 16.1% completed, which has been enough to well over double production.
Shipyard: almost 90% completed
Research Lab: one-third completed

Mining Report -- All mineral stockpiles are increasing at least marginally. Deposits of boronide(just over 4 years) as well as neutronium and corundium(a little under 7 years each) are becoming critical. With sorium production still significantly outpacing our ability to refine it and 1.27m liters being refined each year(9m now in storage and rising), fuel is not expected to become a concern anytime soon.

Lt. Cmdr. Chip Overdrive -- 42nd out of 46
Cmdr. Tell Perj -- 6th out of 15
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Nielsen -- 13th
Lt. Cmdr. Benton Gale -- 16th

Brig. Gen Path Twelve -- 5th out of 5, CO 1st Low Tech Infantry Battalion
Brig. Gen Dolph Stallone -- 2nd out of 5, CO 13th Low Tech Armour Battalion
Maj. Gen Sterling Silves -- Only MG, CO 11th Low Tech Armour Battalion

Dr. Pioneer Deacon Palmer -- Continuing research on increasing construction rate(July 2034 est.)

Slick Willie(4) -- Newly elected Governor-Director!
Sonny Dean(1) -- no assignment
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Old 08-09-2013, 11:34 AM   #45
path12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Swartz View Post
Brig. Gen Path Twelve -- 5th out of 5, CO 1st Low Tech Infantry Battalion

No tyranny of high expectations for me!
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Old 08-09-2013, 12:18 PM   #46
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Call me Governor-Director-Supreme Chancellor to the great planet of Earth.

The people have spoken and it's time that we act! I feel your pain!
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Old 08-09-2013, 12:58 PM   #47
Coffee Warlord
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The Fleet will watch the development of this Governor-Director-Nacho-Beef-Supreme very carefully.
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Old 08-09-2013, 01:18 PM   #48
Brian Swartz
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** Ping: PilotMan. Director-Governor Willie has an important decision to make. The next couple of posts will outline the current situation, after which you have 48 hours to respond. Failure to respond within that timeframe will result in your deputies(i.e. me) making an interim decision **
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Old 08-09-2013, 01:25 PM   #49
Brian Swartz
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May 21st, 2033 – Another historic day for humanity as the orbital shipyard P&A Group is completed. It can build vessels of up to 10,000 tons, well over twice the size of the Essex and Lexington class ships. The slipway is prepped and construction begins on the GEV Marc Aaronson immediately, to be completed sometime in late February of 2034.

Some of the newly-freed-up factory capacity is used to begin a Ground Forces Training Facility, some goes to speed up work on the research lab.

March 1st, 2034 – The GEV Marc Aaronson is another first for mankind, a vessel built in an orbital shipyard and intended for extended manned missions in space. The honor of the first command goes to Commander Leota Schnepel who is something of a prodigy. Schnepel was commissioned just over two years ago in Dec. 2031, and her innovative approaches to training have seen her rise through the ranks quickly.

Her orders are to take the Marc Aaronson on something of a shakedown cruise, testing the geosensor suites on the dozen known asteroids in the inner system(Mars orbit or closer to the Sun). If all goes well there, the moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars will be the next phase.

The closest target was Itokawa, a very typical ball of rock 2km wide, and the Marc Aaronson soon set a course for it. Meanwhile, the P&A Group shipyard began retooling to build a pair of Lexington-class shuttle transports. It would take almost two months.

The journey to Itokawa was about 53m km, and the Marc Aaronson arrived on station just after midnight on the 10th of March – it had taken a week and a half. Finding nothing there, they moved on to Apollo, and on the 6th of April reached Apollo and reported back – minerals found!

It was a small deposit, a few hundred tons of Corbomite and Tritanium, both easily accessible.

There wasn’t anything we could do with this information – we don’t have the technology to mine asteroids yet, which requires a specialized ship and module designed just for that purpose. But this was evidence that the Marc Aaronson’s sensors were working. On it continued its mission to the other ten asteroids.

April 20 – Retooling at the P&A Group yard is complete and the first Lexington-class is begun. It is expected to take just over three months.

June – Dr. Ignacio Bravo’s team has completed work on a lower-power, higher-fuel efficiency technology for engines. He begins work on a new project for Cryogenic Transport. Clearly it will be necessary at some point to exploit whatever resources we find with off-world colonies, and we need some way to effectively transport significant number of colonists over extended
distances.

July – Dr. Grimmett’s team has completed maintenance storage research. They move on to the equal boring cargo handling systems. Later in the month, Dr. Palmer’s team completes work on construction techniques, and finds an impressive 20% increase in speed of production! He gets back to work immediately, this time working on Shipyard Operations.

July 28th – The ST Valencia, first of the Lexington class, is completed. A second Lexington is begun, and Commander Claudio Offutt is assigned to the Valencia.

Sep. 9th – The asteroid survey is complete. The Marc Aaronson has been in operation for six months, and used up only about a sixth of it’s fuel. Cmdr. Schnepel also reports a 3% increase in crew operating efficiency in that time. Only the small deposits on Apollo were found, which is not encouraging – but there is no reason to believe that the sensors are malfunctioning at all.

Now it is time for the acid test. Governor-Director Willie makes a personal appeal to Cmdr. Schnepel, making it clear that she WILL find significant deposits on the moon or the inner planets ... or else. Off to Luna first.

From roughly Mars orbit it was almost a two-week journey if the earth stood still, which in fact it was already moving away from them. The asteroids had taken hours at most to scan, but none of them were larger than 6km diameter – the moon is hundreds of times that size, and took over a week for the Marc Aaronson to get complete readouts.

In the middle of the afternoon on September 30th came the news – Luna was barren. SPACE was not amused. They had to begin considering the fact that perhaps the Earth was nearly unique. What if they couldn’t find significant deposits of TN minerals anywhere else? Humanity could be stuck on a ravaged world with no real future, the technology to advance into space but not the supplies to do it with. Such a thing was terrifying – but very possible.

Venus was up next. The Marc Aaronson arrived on station on October 12th, and the sensors churned out an estimate of over three weeks to survey the planet which is nearly the size of earth itself(though much less inviting to humans). On the morning of the 25th came back the full report:

Several TN minerals present!

This was received to much rejoicing. Director Willie congratulated the Marc Aaronson and her commander on their fine work – though he swallowed hard when he saw some of the details.

The size of the finds were simply astonishing ... millions of tons each! But approximately 2 million tons of sorium, similar amounts of corundium, 13 million neutronium, and an obscene nearly thirty million tons of vendarite were extremely inaccessible and extracting significant amounts of them from such an inhospitable world would be virtually impossible. It wasn’t all bad news though – 50% accessible Duranium was available to the tune of nearly 15
million tons ... that alone made it worth the effort as Earth held just over 40k. Almost 22m of boronide, which by now would be completely gone in three years on earth, was a darn nice kicker as well.

Back at SPACE HQ, Director-Governor Willie and his assistants pondered what to do next ...

** OOC: The next post will be a technical briefing on how colonization works, the precise mineral situation on earth, etc. Any game concept/mechanics questions will of course be welcome and encouraged to clarify the briefing **
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Old 08-09-2013, 01:57 PM   #50
Brian Swartz
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Game Date: October 25, 2034, 6:00 AM

To being with, it is important to note that the Venus deposits may be even larger or more numerous than first reported. A five-person geological team may be formed(members of all four branches can be included) to survey the planet on the ground. This takes a lot longer than the ship-board sensors but is the only way to be certain that all of the deposits have been found. Their survey, if one is conducted, will not result in a reduction -- the geological sensors may not have found everything, but they don't 'overestimate'.

As the ST Valencia is ready at the P&A Group Commercial Shipyard, a team could be formed and immediately sent to Venus if such is desired.

MINERAL SITUATION

Earth:



Venus's known military deposits as of the survey just completed by the GEV Marc Aaronson:

mt = millions of tons

Duranium: 14.83mt(0.5 accessibility)
Neutronium: 13.63mt(0.1)
Boronide: 21.72mt(1.0)
Vendarite: 29.67mt(0.1)
Sorium: 1.938mt(0.1)
Uridium: 8.794mt(0.5)
Corundium: 2.289mt(0.1)

By comparison, this is on the Apollos asteroid:

Corbomite: 431(1) -- not millions or thousands, just four hundred thirty-one tons
Tritanium: 324(1)


COLONIZATION

In Aurora, there are three main factors to consider in colonization: gravity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure. If a body does not have gravity within a (quite wide) acceptable range, it cannot be colonized period. Venus is about as close as you can get at 91% of earth's gravity, no problem at all. Temperature-wise, Venus is 462 degrees celcius, with the Earth at 14 degrees. This is a huge issue, not completely insurmountable. Atmospheric pressure is 100 times that on earth -- also an issue but not as big of one as temperature in this case.

The equipment required to survive in conditions less suitable than earth is known in game terms as infrastructure. Every habitable body has a colony cost(earth's is 0) -- each point of colony cost means one infrastructure is required to support a million people. Each infrastructure costs 2 duranium to produce, plus you then need to get it there(build the ships, fuel, etc.).

Venus's colony cost is 25, i.e. 25 units of infrastructure per million colonists.

Other potential habitable bodies in the solar system:

Luna(colony cost 2.0) -- already found to be barren of minerals
Mars(2.0)
Mercury(16.21)
Io/Europa/Ganymede/Callisto(5.75) -- moons of Jupiter, a much farther journey but a doable one
Titan(7.0) -- largest moon of Saturn

Terraforming is possible, it would require research at this point, then either a small colony to set up terraforming facilities or terraforming ships, each of which have their own costs. It also requires a lot of time, so it is not a short-term solution.

Automated mines(requiring no people to operate them) are also possible, but this would anger(in rp, not game terms) a ton of people who are upset about rising unemployment. Politically disastrous, but possible.

Immediate colonization is not possible until Cryogenic Transport is researched(a new ship would then need to be designed and built, and a freighter would be needed to move infrastructure etc. there as well). CT research is currently slated to be done in July of 2037, or a little under three years from now.

I'll be happy to answer any questions as mentioned, but for now I see a number of possibilities:

1. Do you want a geology team formed to go to Venus? If yes, should they take the best leaders available(highest geological bonus skill, higher means faster surveying) or should those currently assigned to other work remain in their current jobs?

2. You may wish to accelerate/obsess about some branch of research, such as terraforming technology or cyro transport to get things moving faster. Another possibility, though IMO remote at this point, would be to prioritize Jump Point Theory research(gets us down the track to grav sensors which are needed to detect jump points to other star systems and interstellar exploration).

3. You could choose to punt and do nothing while more of the solar system is surveyed. Even if 'do nothing' isn't the choice, you may wish to give orders along the lines of 'survey habitable worlds ASAP', form X number of geology teams, build X number more Essex-class survey vessels and/or Lexington-class shuttle transports, etc.

SPACE awaits your orders and/or clarifications on this briefing. You are now on the clock, 48 hours to choose.

Edit: we can design ships that go further if necessary, but the current range of the Marc Aaronson being 6.2 billion km, that means getting to Pluto is about the outer range of it's capability(it would be a year and a half there and a year and a half back). The timeframe for colonizing the outer system is therefore pretty large at current engine tech.

Last edited by Brian Swartz : 08-09-2013 at 02:00 PM.
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