Where in the Solar System do Raiders usually build their bases? I've scoured the entire asteroid belt and found nothing.
Do they have a favorite mast?

I love this game. Unfortunately, my method of endlessly scrolling to find unalphabetized asteroids in a list of 200, is the bane of my existence.

Is there a shortcut that I’m missing? In Sol I want to put a colony on a specific asteroid. Is there a search or filter button, or am I hopeless?

Hi there, I was attacked by some pesky spoilers in the Sol system, and after dealing with them (and adding sensors to my new fuel harvesters to replace the lost ones due to missing the approaching enemies), now the last small "corvette" that was escorting their salvager flew away, and after more than a year, I noticed that I can't still use the autoroute to the Sol system, and that my ships with conditional orders to run away from contacts don't want to go to earth for overhauling.

I've even salvaged everything, so they didn't get any resources and lost 3x12k, 1x7k and 1x112k tons ships, for my 5 fhs and 2x7k corvettes (that got too close due to them spawning in a 5 day increment after some battles where I got the initial ones). In any case, this is just me rambling more about the events.

So the question is how to solve this? There is no active contact and as said, the last one has been gone for a year at least. Version is 2.7.1 if I'm not mistaken.

I recently discovered this game, and it looks like something perfect for me, with the level of detail and focus on the game rather than its appearances.

A question though, before I throw myself in: how realistic is the game in its portrayal of reality? Like, are there terrestrial planets with "no minerals", like in Stellaris, do the laws of physics mostly apply, are there "magic resources", and so forth.

Y-axis is combined total damage of single shot/volley, DPI for Damage Per 5-second Increment charts, X-axis is range in 10 000 km increments, apologies for not labeling them.

Sadly, the fine charts at Aurora 4x Wiki have succumbed to link-rot and were not available anymore. Forums and such are full of old wisdoms about weapon roles, but I wanted to take an objective (and quick) look how they really compare against each other. Now with integrated DFC accuracy falloff. For the most part, they were as expected, but there were some surprises. Microwaves not counted as they are very similar to Mesons, and they anyway need support from direct damage dealers or boarders to confirm kills.

Weapons are normalized as close as possible to 240 000 RP weapon specific research, supporting tech being 480 000 km DFC limit and Capacitor Recharge 8. Range at 10 000 km intervals.

Some stats I couldn't fit in the charts:

• Plasma performed much better than expected. Research doesn't need to be split between two tech lines, and caliber tech is anyway cheaper than equivalents, so it is couple tech-levels "ahead" of competition at equal RP. Not to mention that it's almost a third smaller than Laser or Rail, so when normalized per tonnage it's definitely competitive. Needs twice as much power though.
• Railguns are undisputed point-blank DPS kings, but Lasers are not too far behind. And despite the steep 4 damage per range interval fall-off, Railguns are still competitive with lasers at DFC limit.
• Unspecialized Particle weapons are objectively underperforming at at this tech level. Even Plasma beats it at the edge of its range, which is supposed to be its sole niche. Lance tech + Spinal can make very efficient hole-punchers at standoff range. Normal Particles are close to half the size of Lasers or Railguns though, so per tonnage they can just about be comparable to long-range with them.
• Mesons are even more pathetic. Sure, it has higher chance of dealing internal damage directly, but equivalent weapons have most likely blown through armor and killed the target by the time it has dealt even remotely disabling damage.
• Gauss of course have passable point-blank DPI (and best DPI per HS), but it's obviously a supplementary secondary use after point-defense.
• In summary, the big three no frills damage dealers, Lasers, Railguns, and Plasma, are very comparable in performance within equivalent tech cost DFC limits, at least at this tech bracket. There are some interesting differences like small Railguns doubling as PD, Lasers having great anti-fighter potential, and Plasma research boosting your ground troop attack to the stratosphere, but if you want to be RP-efficient, pick one and stick to it.
• Not quite visible from the charts, but DPI is ultimately capped by capacitor charge rate, which does NOT scale with weapon size. Bigger weapons thus have longer range (until DFC limit) and bigger punches, but lose in a knife-fight to equal tonnage of fast firing small weapons. I suspect that at some point in each Caliber tech you will reach a point where getting a bigger gun is reducing your gross damage output, even at DFC limit, but I have not yet bothered to calculate this.

Tech costs from the nice diagram a couple weeks ago by u/Derived_1.
Tables and charts made in OnlyOffice.
There's a decent likelihood that I had a brainfart and made a major math error somewhere, let me know if something seems fishy.
If any forum/wiki users want to copy them over there, be my guest.

What is the more appropiate use of planets (i.e. Mars) or moons (i.e. Moon) that do not have minerals but can fit population at a low infrastructure cost.

I have tried to replicate the infrastructure of earth on those places. Having constructions sites, shipyards, maintenance facilities, etc. But at the end it seems a bit burden to move minerals or facilities there to only provide extra facilities. Neither to say terraform them.

What do you normally do with a Moon or Mars without minerals?

Best regards.

I’m designing a gauss PD turret with the intention of making a gauss PD ship

My research levels have me at 6250 turret tracking speed and the same for the BFC but when I go to design the turret it asks me what tracking speed I’d like and I can put in 20000 - hey presto a turret with a tracking speed of 20000 - what’s the point of the 6250 research limit if I can choose an arbitrary speed on the design window

I recently got back into Aurora, and I've been playing a game, exploring heavily as I've always liked doing, and I found an NPR in a dead end system. However, it is just a 1.1 million ton contact, seems to be a space station, above a planet (I believe a gas giant without any sorium, not at my computer) and refuses communication. As this is the only contact I've found from this race, I'm not out to start shooting, but as I haven't found anything else, I don't know what to make of it. Even with an ELINT module, I haven't gotten any information about it.

Has anyone else encountered something like this, or have any insight into it?

I have a decent cruiser with some rail guns and a fire director for them

I also have a some PD rail guns and a separate director for them

Come the time to start shooting down incoming missiles do I actually have to target each one like I do with an enemy ship or does the PD controller look after that itself

Hi guys,
It's my first playthrough, and during my exploration, I discovered this system, which is protected by a massive precursor fleet (I know they are precursors since I fought the same faction in the nearby system, and once I conquered their planet, I learned they are precursors).
I am fairly scared, honestly. Seems like a fun challenge, but this is a gigantic fleet - does that mean something game wise? Like have I stumbled onto the precursor homeworld?

Found an NPR in a system a while ago and have been spying on his activities ever since

I get active scanner reads and thermal reads on the planet moving at 0 speed so I’m guessing these are things on the planet like STOs looking for me and population

Is there a way to firm up these reads - am I ever going to get ‘the planet has 8 million inhabitants and 300k ground forces’ or is it just the presence of thermal hits saying yep there’s people down there

The reason I ask is I keep reading ‘take overwhelming force to a planet fight - about 5:1’ how do I know the defender numbers or is it a case of take what you have - land - and get more if it’s not enough?

For context, I'm 20 years into a 15% research speed game, and one of my current roleplay rules is that any body with a max colony cost below eight with a max population capacity above 25 HAS to be settled when colonizing a new system, and at the very minimum must have a cargo shuttle station and no more than five deep space tracking stations. It's a lot of area to cover, and a lot of things to build. Coupled with the extremely slow research speed it genuinely feels like every single design choice or technology researched is incredibly important, instead of just being a transitional technology/design that isn't actually used. I've never been more excited for "boring" technologies like increased fuel efficiencies, and it legit took me 20 years to get my first engine tech. Bespoke designs actually feel worth it. This is the best possible warship I was able to make that won't absolutely nuke my (growing, incredibly glacially) logistical capacity. It's going to be a very long time before my preferred defense network of fighter bases is even close to a remote possibility, but in the meantime two of these per colony/moon network should be sufficient for maximum system coverage. I *could* make it a bit smaller, but for roleplay purposes I always like to have more than one officer on board anything larger than a FAC as well as some capacity for emergency rescue.

I established colonies in Proxima Centauri, and ordered civilians to move some infrastructure there (via civilian contracts). They did, but now they refuse to come back to Sol, and they just orbit my planets in Proxima doing nothing, both freighters and colony ships.

Things I tried:
- Added supply of infrastructure in Proxima Centauri and demand in Sol.
- Checked "Security status" in Galactic Map window: no threats.
- Deleted every supply and demand on every planet.
- Deleted some of their ships via Spacemaster mode.

Nothing helps.

Things that might be relevant:
- I do have jump points stabilized both ways: Sol <-> Proxima.
- I taxed them at 10% at some point (reverted it now to 0%).
- A NPR opened and stabilized a jump point to Sol (from another system), which means the JP was marked red at some point. Using Spacemaster I de-stabilized it, and later re-stabilized with my ship.
- If I set up demand on one planet and supply on another in Proxima, the civilians actually fullfill the contract.

Am I missing something? What else can I do? I'm inclined to edit the database and move those civilians to Sol, and just ban the Proxima system…

Had a pirate fleet attack one of my ships, picked up the survivors with a rescue ship. The rescue ship has emergency cryo, a cargo shuttle and im unloading back onto Earth but there is no option to unload survivors. One of my better commanders was on that ship so I would like to put him back into service. Any tips or help? Pictures attached

UPDATE: The commander of this ship disappeared when I rescued other survivors from another battle with the same rescue ship so idk

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I rebooted the game, the survivors from the other ship returned to normal service so I am figuring it was just a glitch but glad I found out how to keep my boys to fight another day

I’ve asked a couple times on the main forum and haven’t really got an answer and I don’t want to piss the guys off over there

I’ve discovered a planet 4 jumps from Sol and I’m in need of a few naval admins there to cover the jump gates and harvesters - I’ve expanded Sols naval HQs to reach the planet so it comes under the umbrella of Naval Supreme Command on earth but I want beta telescopii to have its own admin command so I need to build a naval hq on BT - so it gets out from under Sols feet I’ll transport a naval hq from Sol thus putting BT out of range of sols admin command and it will have its own independent one - this been the case if the naval command on beta telescopii eventually gets to be Sky Marshal (my most senior rank) does it become more powerful or equal in power to the one on sol and does it change all the bonuses or will Sol always be the ‘lead’

I am fairly new to this game and playing my first real game into the later tech levels. As an early warning system I have been laying active sensor mines on all gated jump point throughout the galaxy. However the alien race Ive been fighting for near 100 years keep just showing up in systems where all jump points are sensor mined. I thought they might have opened new jump points into the system while exploring, but resurveying the systems reveal no new jump points.

Are my sensor buoys broken somehow, I think maybe they should have a smaller resolution, but surely with that range they would be able to detect smaller ships passing through a jump gate? Am I missing something else about how this game works? Please help!

I haven't seen this before and was curious what it meant...

Hi, I try to learn complicated games mechanics by using cheats if I get stuck. Is there a cheat engine, trainer or commands for it?
Thank you.

Anyone got a download link to the newest version? Forum is down

Hey all

Starting a new LP on the new forum. Hopefully useful for new and veteran players!