Bay 12 Games Forum

These are subject to change as we play. I've never played Aurora with others, and I've never heard of it being successfully done by others. This is something of an experiment in that regard.

Fog of War
This is the big one. At game start, your capital is at Earth. You get instant reports from sensors, fleets, etc, in the capital system. You can also instantly issue orders to anything in the system, as well as set research and production. Out of system, you're blind. You give me orders about where to send a task group and what to do when certain things happen, and I'll follow them as best I can. If an unanticipated situation arises, I'll order the TG to do what seems best from its view, and taking your recent strategies into account. Things will go bad, ships will be lost, and I'll only tell you about things when a ship that 'saw'* it reaches the capital. Thus, if an enemy completely wipes out a TG, you will never know what happened to it.

This does not just apply to TGs. You are blind to the happenings of your extrasolar colonies as well, until a ship bearing news reaches the capital. With each ship's safe arrival, I will give you a full update on the colony it watches over, as well as give you the chance to issue orders to said colony. Yes, the news ship needs to reach the colony for it to receive new orders**.

Surveys
Just to be a total ass, I'm adding this blindness to extrasolar surveys. Geosurvey ships need to either carry their information back to earth, or pass it off to another ship who will. I will keep track of what has been surveyed when, and if a survey TG is taken out, will use SpaceMaster to unsurvey the bodies whose information did not make it back. Since I can't find a good way to unsurvey single jump point survey locations, those will not be unsurveyed. Let's just say the gravsurvey TGs leave coded beacons at their survey points, pointing to the jump point. If you want to be a total ass as well, you can order armed ships to each survey point to destroy the beacons. That I'd take as sufficient reason to unsurvey the entire system. This won't hide information on already discovered jump points, but will force new surveys to resurvey everything to be certain all jump points were discovered.

Colonies
If you destroy any ships bearing news back to Sol that a colony has been successfully made, and land troops on said colony, as well as a colony population of your own, it's yours. The defeated population is suppressed and absorbed into your own. The other (race? nation?)'s colony ship simply did not arrive, as far as anyone at Earth can tell. If you don't land a colonist population, you need to intercept traffic headed to the colony, or you risk word of your invasion getting out.

This fog of war will force players to adapt. Lines of communication will become very important, and raiding (especially the stealthy kind taking advantage of the communication situation) potentially crippling. Best of all, it should allow me to play out your orders with a minimum amount of waiting on emails and such, leaving you to deal with R&D, strategy, diplomacy, etc.

Other

ECM
ECM works by fooling enemy sensors into believing there are more targets than there truly are. Thus, ships with extremely high ECM values, or many ships with lower values, may scare enemy TGs into retreating. Of course, ECCM counters this. Maybe you can make use of it, and if so, good luck to you.

Capitals
If you're tired of living in the Sol system, you can move your capital to another planet, and your sphere of influence will move too. It's not Earth that is important, only your capital as the center of your empire.

Invaders & SM Powers
They are off. You're going to have enough trouble dealing with each other and the mineral situation for a long time, and I don't plan on making it so much worse that the invaders are called for. But if you get too genocidal (ex: nuking the hell out of earth), I will quietly flip the switch and give you a common enemy, make no mistake. If you're being extremely bloody, I'll make an npc race played by me and built to make the invaders cry.

Email
We'll be doing this by email. I need a method that will allow sending of masses of pictures, etc, and the forum PMs don't like that. Anyway. Most of the information I give will be via email to the player it concerns, and I expect orders and such back the same way. Anything that everyone can see, will get a shout in the thread, so check it often, as well as use it for global diplomacy. Along with your orders, I request you send along any plans, as well as information on diplomacy and anything else that happens behind the scenes. For most of the game, nobody will know exactly what is going on. When the game ends, I hope to write up a log of what happened, so you can all look back and see exactly what has happened. It's the payment for me not telling you much of anything, yet expecting you to run an empire constantly on a war footing.

*A ship that closes within, say, a million kilometers of another, can communicate with the other and pass over the news one may be carrying. This is done less to make sense, and more to prevent a jump bouy network from instantly relaying information back to Earth. Battle and such, it's hivemind all the way.

**As well, a task group out of system needs a ship to reach it with new orders before it will change its current set.