2020-05-31 10:45:05

if you have 1.95, can you upgrade straight to 1.11?

2020-05-31 16:49:02

Yes, you can. Just download the game and extract it into the same place. I have not checked this morning to see if the forum is back up, but if you download my version I linked earlier, you’ll need to probably put that somewhere else that’s already 1.11 of course.

2020-05-31 18:34:51

Part 1 of the aurora tutorials is here.
In this we go through the basics of setting up a new game, briefly discuss commanders, have a look at the economics window, and discuss turns and events.
I originally was going to make it video but I realized that I was only listening in to Zak's NVDA and all the video shows is an oBS screen tongue
Then we had some audio issues in the middle so I used Goldwave to edit the file, but couldn't convert it back to video. The plan was also to upload it to Youtube.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e2oq7z2egjw78 … 1.mp3?dl=1
In the next installment, which might be recorded later today or sometime next week the plan is to discuss  ship components (research projects) and ship design, and if time permits the basics of the naval organization screen.

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2020-06-02 16:07:26

Jaws user here, wondering if anyone knows of a way to get Jaws to behave better with the game's combo boxes? in some, Jaws fails to consistently read the currently selected item, instead reading the previously selected item every time I hit the arrow keys (I only found this out by tabbing out and back into combo boxes and finding out that the thing I though I'd selected wasn't). In others, Jaws reads nothing at all.
Hoping someone has suggestions. I've tried with NVDA and everything is read out more reliably, I just would prefer not to use NVDA for various reasons.

2020-06-02 17:17:34

In create windows:
there is a no name update check box. What is it?
next to this check box are two edit field named entry 1 and entry 2 both with "3" by default written. What about?
And what about prototype button?

Thanks!

2020-06-02 18:00:35

Hi Majno.
The no name update will make it so even if you change the attributes of the project it won't dynamically update the name. THis is good if you have a custom name already.
The prototype button allows you to create a prototype to use in class design to see what it looks like without first having to research the project, but ships with prototypes can not be retooled.
I do not know about the two other fields, but maybe Zak does.
Soon there's going to be another tutorial installment where we discuss research projects and class design.

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2020-06-02 19:05:54

The other two fields are actually just weird accessibility issues, as they aren't actually visible to sighted players. I meant to report them as a bug but always got distracted. They can be ignored.

rashad, I've not seen weird combo box behavior with Jaws, but I've generally played with NVDA. Can you give examples of places where that happens and I'll see if I can figure out what's going on?

2020-06-02 21:20:32

LordLundin and I just ran through another tutorial session, involving ship design and surveying. It will hopefully be posted soon. smile

2020-06-02 21:26:19

We encountered some issues, including a tired me with speech problems and someone with a silly nickname calling me saying the nickname for the whole wide world.
Thank god for editing ... I just have to figure out *how to edit*.
It should be up within 2 days.

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2020-06-03 11:22:35

The Jaws thing is pretty consistent, I get the unpredictable announcement of what's selected in combo boxes in most places, such as the dropdowns in the create tech screen that lets you select the stats of your tech. If I listed all of the places this happens it would be a very long list, just assume it happens with every combo box that isn't a table.
The other issue, Jaws reading nothing at all, is a lot rarer. So far the main place where I've noticed it is on the shipyards screen, in the combo box that lets you pick activities such as create new slipway, as well as in the ship creation boxes.
Completely unrelated, could someone talk about how surveying works in detail? I've created survey ships, however following the instructions on the wiki, which I assume are from an older version, have gotten me nowhere. Do I still have to detach each ship individually? Once I've done that, how do I set orders?

2020-06-03 19:29:34

Rashad,

I've been exploring all the combo boxes you mention with Jaws and the only potentially weird behavior I notice is around tech which you don't have the ability to construct yet, such as jump engines without jump point theory. It's not been consistently doing anything like reading the previous option. I'll keep an eye out and see if I can reproduce this somehow. Which version of Jaws are you running?

Regarding survey ships, in short, you can either detach the ships individually, using the detach button, or drag and drop them from one place in the fleet tree view to another. It's more or less equivalent, you want them all in their own individual fleets for maximum coverage.

Once you get the ships into individual fleets, you then can either order them individually on their "fleet movement," tabs, or assign standing orders for survey on the "Standing Orders," tab. You also assign conditional orders from there, such as refuel when fuel is less than 50%.

Hope this helps. The audio tutorial we recorded yesterday goes over this very subject near the end. Please ask if you have questions, it's what we're here for.

2020-06-03 19:46:26

How the hide events button works?
I'm trying to hidde an aanoying event. it shows always new naval characters new skills. for example:
Federation; Commander Experience; N/A; The Political Reliability bonus of CMD Lucia Malephar has increased to 10%    Current Bonuses  Crew Training 50    Survey 15%    Intelligence 5%    Political
Reliability 10%     Current Assignment  Unassigned

Is there any way to hidde those events?

When i select this event an go to the hidde button it always says
"Please select an event to hide or unhide"

what should i select?

2020-06-03 19:49:15

Majno,

This is one instance where Golden Cursor or something like it would be useful. You basically need to click on the event you want to hide, move the mouse to the hide button, and click on that again. If you set a Golden Cursor bookmark on the Hide button, this becomes easier.

It's worth reporting that events can't currently be hidden using the keyboard alone, which is an issue.

2020-06-03 20:42:31 (edited by Rashad 2020-06-03 20:44:16)

Using Jaws 2019, Windows 10, Made sure everything was maximized and that other combo boxes don't do this. My Screen resolution is way above what's needed, too, so it won't be that either.
As to the survey thing, I see the game has something called a survey fleet by default. Is it possible to give individual ships within that their own standing orders just for the sake of organisation?

2020-06-03 21:02:25

rashad,

The game's default "survey fleet," is nothing special. It's basically just a placeholder the game provides at the start.

The thing to understand about fleets in this game is that, generally, location is tracked on a fleet basis, not for individual ships. Fleets can be composed of any number of ships, including zero, which is where your default "Survey fleet," "Battle fleet," etc. start out. THey're really not useful for anything in themselves.

What is probably closer to what you want is to define a survey-specific admin command. Admin commands are basically a way to organize fleets under a commander who will provide bonuses to the entire structure. THere's more info on them on this wiki page. If you create a survey admin command, you can then assign an officer of the proper rank to be commander for that command, and he will provide his survey bonus to any fleets under it.

To summarize, fleets are always at a specific location, and can be empty. Admin commands are based out of a specific population, like Earth, and allow you to organize fleets by purpose and provide bonuses to them depending on the kind of command in question. You probably just want to delete the survey fleet or use it as the destination for your shipyards when they're done building new units.

2020-06-03 22:35:21

Yeah, sorry, I'm still very confused on exactly how to do this.
So I currently have 2 survey ships. they've both automatically ended up in the game's survey fleet. After reading the Wiki article you linked to, I'd like to create a survey admin command under the main admin command and then place both ships there so that they can separately survey. Any chance you'd be able to walk me through, preferably without dragging and dropping as I'm not confident I'll be able to do that?

2020-06-03 23:43:48

Rashad,

We will have to do a bit of dragging and dropping, but it's not as bad as it looks. Here's how you do it.

Starting from the admin commands tab in Naval Organization, you need to select your "General," command in the tree view. Although this step might be optional it's a good habit to get into. Go to the second list view, and select "Survey Command," from the list of new admin command types. Press "Create new admin command." You'll be asked for a command name. Call it survey command or whatever you want.

Go back to the fleet tree view, and select Survey Fleet. Expand it to see the list of ships inside. You can just tab to the detach button and press that, you'll find as you do so that you'll suddenly have new, single-ship fleets with the name of the ship. These are what you'll be dragging.

Move up and down the tree to find one ship you want, and press the key to bring Jaws to the PC cursor. On the laptop that's capslock+left-bracket, I'm sure it's something similar on the desktop.

Press the drag and drop hotkey, On a laptop, that's Caps lock-shift-8, I'm guessing it's similar on the desktop, possibly numpad-insert-shift-numpad-slash. Jaws will say "Drag object."

Turn back on your  PC cursor, with Caps lock+semi-colon, or the numpad-plus key.

Finally, move down the list with arrow keys to find "Survey Command," or whatever you called it. Press the drag and drop hotkey again and Jaws should say, "Dragging your ship name to srv- Survey Command." nOte that if you do this using the Jaws cursor alone, it won't find the object you're dragging, for some reason, but using the combination of Jaws and PC it works fine.

Repeat this process for the other ship you want to transfer.

I hope this helps. I just confirmed that it works over here, so if you have any trouble I can try to clarify.

2020-06-04 02:11:07 (edited by hadi.gsf 2020-06-04 02:15:21)

Rashid just one thing to note,
Don't put two ships in one survey fleet, I think it's not efficient at all to do that.
You'll basically burn fuel, deployment time and maintenance life for two ships to survey one body at a time.
Create two survey fleets, like, Earth space survey alpha and earth space survey bravo.
then, give both of them the standing order of  survey near bodies.
This way, your two ships will head out in different directions and will cover the system from  two directions.
Remember, a fleet consists of ships that are at the exact same location. Two ships in a fleet cannot be in different locations. This is a very strict rule.

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2020-06-04 12:12:38 (edited by LordLundin 2020-06-04 13:14:19)

Part 2 of the Aurora tutorials with me and Zak are here.
In this, we create an engine and build 2 geosurvey vessles and set them to geosurvey sol.
We were both a bit tired so it did not come out as well as it should, and yes ... you get to see different design philosophies in practice here.
Zak starts very early with geosurvey while as it takes me several years and much better technology. I build larger vessles with longer range and more geosurvey sensors and a science department while as he builds them very cheap, small and expendable. There are pros and cons to both approaches.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rz0hnrvbshcn7 … 2.mp3?dl=1

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2020-06-04 12:41:06

How wonderful that someone actually posed the question - I was going to create a quick tutorial on this regardless.
Aurora Tutorials part 2.5 is here, in which I explain how and why you should set up naval commands, as well as showing you how to assign officers to them.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tykpsldj556hx … 5.mp3?dl=1
For more information, refer to one of the comments in this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora/comment … et_orders/
I have copied all of the information over for the sake of convenience

That one I can explain. Part 1/2 (Yes, this is long.)
(Steve posts I'm drawing from: Naval Organization, Command & Control Rules, Admin Commands.)
Commander Slots
There's four ways for a commander can provide a bonus. From lowest rank to highest, they can be a ship's officer, a ship commander, a fleet commander, or an admin commander.

A ship's officer provides one skill at 100% effectiveness, depending on which position they hold. This always requires the appropriate command module (e.g., you can't have an Executive Officer on a ship unless the ship has an Auxiliary Control module).

A ship's commander provides all of their skills at 50% effectiveness. Every ship can have a commander.

A fleet commander provides 100% of their Reaction skill to the whole fleet. This requires a Flag Bridge module on at least one ship in the fleet. (If there is no Flag Bridge, there is no separate Fleet Commander slot. The senior ship commander in the fleet will be shown as fleet commander, but they will not provide a Reaction bonus to ships other than their own).

An admin command provides a different bonus depending what command type it is, and it provides that bonus to every fleet subordinate to it (directly or indirectly).
Admin Commands
A ship can benefit from any number of admin commands, in principle. However, each admin command requires a higher-ranked officer than the commands under it, so you'll run out of officer ranks at some point.
Unlike the other commander slots, admin commands require no ship modules. They're based on the Naval Headquarters buildings on your planets, instead. Any planet with NHQ buildings has a radius - the first NHQ gives you radius 1, then each time you double the number of NHQs, the radius increases by 1. So a planet with 2 NHQs can command two jumps out, 4 NHQs can command three jumps out, 8 NHQs can command four jumps out, and so on. Patrol and Survey commands double this radius, so a Patrol command based at a planet with 4 NHQ buildings will have a radius of 6, not 3.
Training commands are a special type of command - ships in a Training command will gain skill much more rapidly, but they will also use much more fuel and supply that they otherwise would.
You start the game with a top-level admin command, of type General, based on your homeworld. Unlike other admin commands, it cannot be deleted, but the type and host planet can be changed.
An Example
Consider the Survey skill, as an example, and how it applies to a basic survey ship with one basic survey sensor(strength=1) and a science department, surveying Alpha Centauri I.

Because the ship has a Science Department module, it can appoint a Science Officer. The Science Officer provides 100% of their bonus. Let's say Lieutenant Commander Reggie Redshirt has 25% Survey skill and gets this slot.

Every ship's commander gets to provide 50% of their bonus to everything (or 100% if no module exists). Because the Science module exists, it's 50% in this case. The commander is Commander Keen, and he has a 20% bonus. 20%*50% = 10%, so this gives a 10% bonus to the ship's Survey ability.

The ship is in a fleet of its own, so there's no fleet commander slot. Even if there was, it would provide no Survey bonus.

The first admin command over the ship is Alpha Centauri Survey Command(of type Survey, naturally), run by Captain Londo Mollari. Because it's a Survey command, it's 25%. Londo also has a 20% bonus, and 20%*25% = 5%, so this admin command provides a 5% bonus to the Survey skill of all ships in the admin.

The next admin command over that is Universal Survey Command(also of type Survey), run by the unfortunately named Commodore Sixty Four. She's a really good survey commander, with a 40% bonus, and again Survey commands give 25%. So 40%*25% = 10%, and she gives a 10% bonus to all ships in her admin.

Above Universal Survey Command is Exploration Command(of type Patrol), commanded by Rear Admiral William Adama. Because this is of type Patrol, it provides no survey bonus, so Adama's 5% survey bonus provides no bonus here. (His high Engineering skill does help them stay on station a bit longer, though)

Above that is Non-Combat Forces Command(of type Industrial). Like Adama, Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker cannot apply her Survey skill here, and her 10% is of no use. It does help keep our ships organized in a nice clean fashion, though, which is nice.

Finally, the top-level command for the whole navy is Terran High Command(type General), run by Admiral Miles Naismith. He also has a 10% Survey bonus, but because it's a General command, it's of some use and gives 10%. 10%*10% = 1%, so he provides a final 1% boost to the ship's Survey skill.
The result of this is that the ship gets 25% from Redshirt, 10% from Keen, 5% from Mollari, 10% from Four, nothing from Adama or Foraker, and 1% from Naismith. 1.25*1.1*1.05*1.1*1.01 = 1.60401, so the ship is 60.401% better at surveying than its basic stats would indicate. The one survey point per hour that its sensor nominally generates will actually be just over 1.6 points per hour.

Part 2/2.
Bonus Types
There's several different bonus types a commander can give. Here's what they do and how to give each of them. (Note: I'm not 100% confident of this info - it's my understanding, but it may be imperfect. Things I'm especially unsure of are in italics.)

Crew Training is used to make the ship's crew perform more effectively at a wide range of various skills. A ship's executive officer (XO) provides 100% of their bonus, a commander provides 50%, Naval commands provide 25%, and General commands provide 10%. The points are added up, and increase ship grade bonuses, up to a max of 1000 points = 21%.

Fleet Training isn't listed as a separate skill, so I assume it just uses the Crew Training skill. I'm unsure what role ship officers/commanders play, if any, and I'd assume there isn't one. Fleet commanders might play a role, but I really don't know. Admin Commands provide a bonus of 10% for General commands, and a perfect 100% for Training commands.

Reaction controls initiative for ships in combat - fleets with higher Reaction ratings move later in any given tick, and thus can control engagement range more easily. They also have better response time to detecting hostile forces. A fleet commander provides 100% to the whole fleet. A de facto fleet commander(i.e., the senior ship's commander in a fleet with no Flag Bridge) provides 100% to their own ship only. Ship commanders otherwise provide 50%. Naval and Patrol commands provide 25%, and General commands provide 10%.

Engineering reduces the breakdown chance for a ship due to regular failure rate chances. (This only applies to military ships, and does nothing for commercial ships). An Engineering Officer provides 100%, and a commander provides 50%. Naval, Patrol, and Survey commands each give 25%, and General commands give 10%.

Tactical improves a ship's to-hit chances. The Tactical Officer provides 100%, and the commander provides 50%. Naval commands provide 25%, and General 10%.

Fighter Combat improves a fighter's to-hit chances. I'm unsure if the CAG or any admin commands help with this - it may just be 100% from the fighter's commander.

Fighter Operations improves rearming time (and possibly refueling time?) for ships inside a hangar. I assume that it gets 100% from the CAG, and 50% from the carrier's commander. No admin command seems to help, that I can see.

Ground Support increases to-hit chances for units engaging in planetary combat. I don't see any ship module or admin command that helps it, so maybe it's just 100% commander and nothing else?

Survey increases the survey points generated by geo/grav survey vessels. You get 100% from Science Officers, 50% from commanders, 25% from Survey commands, and 10% from General commands.

Mining increases the mining rate for orbital miners and Sorium harvesters. You get 100% from the commander, 25% from Industrial commands, 10% from Logistics, and 5% from General.

Production helps with jump point stabilization (and maybe some other stuff?). You again get 100% from the commander, 25% from Industrial commands, 10% from Logistics, and 5% from General.

Terraforming helps with terraforming rate. You get 100% from the commander, but no admin commands seem to help in my testing.

Diplomacy and Communications are used to deal with alien races - Communications establishes the ability to talk to aliens, and Diplomacy helps improve relations once you do. Both of them require commanders to be in ships with a Diplomacy Module. If the ship has one, it gets 100%, otherwise nothing. No admin commands help.

Intelligence is used for intel-gathering on ships with ELINT modules. Again, 100% from the commander and nothing else.

Logistics increases the rate of loading and unloading cargo from ships. You get 100% from the commander, 25% from Logistics commands, 10% from Industrial, and 5% from General.

Xenoarchaeology was relevant in VB6, but it seems to be useless for naval commanders in C# - only ground commanders use it.

Political Reliability has no influence on a commander's performance - it's used only to increase the chances of auto-promotion.

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2020-06-04 20:30:31

Really appreciate the detailed guide. While messing around with other things, I also found out that you can order a fleet to join another through the movement orders tab, in case that's easier for anyone. the drag and drop thing is significantly easier than I thought, though, so only mentioning it in case.

2020-06-04 20:56:37

Rashad,

Glad you figured it out. You will need to drag and drop in combat, but that works more or less the same.

I'm hoping that we can maybe get another tutorial up this weekend. I'd love to know if these are helpful for people or if they'd prefer some other approach.

2020-06-04 21:01:56

hadi.gsf wrote:

Rashid just one thing to note,
Don't put two ships in one survey fleet, I think it's not efficient at all to do that.
You'll basically burn fuel, deployment time and maintenance life for two ships to survey one body at a time.
Create two survey fleets, like, Earth space survey alpha and earth space survey bravo.
then, give both of them the standing order of  survey near bodies.
This way, your two ships will head out in different directions and will cover the system from  two directions.
Remember, a fleet consists of ships that are at the exact same location. Two ships in a fleet cannot be in different locations. This is a very strict rule.


Is not so fuel burning. If one ship has 1 geo survey point for example, one ship more will gets one point more (2 total geo survey points)
Is it True?
In previous games i have sent only one ship to survey and it took lot of time to complete the system survey.

Currently i have 3 ships in same fleet and they have almost surveyed all the system in  near seven years.

2020-06-04 21:05:02

Majno,

The solution to that problem is to put multiple survey sensors on a single ship. I usually do between 2 and 4. Of course, it's up to individual taste. smile

Just updated the OP with the new audio tutorials. smile

2020-06-04 21:23:36

Thanks for all the help so far, next possibly dumb question.
The fleet window has 2 tabs. no matter what I do I can't get the first tab to move, the one I'd need to use to get standing orders and so on. Tried with both NVDA and Jaws. Suggestions?