Bay 12 Games Forum

Boston Dynamic has walkers practically already.  Slow, expensive, even not very fuel efficient, but able to traverse anything that isn't a solid wall.  It's not hard to imagine building one.  Even a common survivor with decent stats in mechanics could build an eight-legged hydraulic walker.  It's not actually that complicated, it's just that wheels are VASTLY superior in all efficient ways, so there's no reason to make a walker in the real world because it's just expensive and does less.  But in Cata, it doesn't matter.

Ideally a healing type that replaces missing body parts with evil versions.  Regrow a fungus arm, or regrow your spine and get 90% manipulation back, but have to eat 50% more often.  Even better if it's not targetted, so it just hits one/all pawns on the map with injuries.  Partial failures could cause wildlife to sprout weird limbs and become dangerous...

Are there any mods to reduce food consumption?  I'm burning through like 4 pizzas so that I can sit and read.

Honestly?  I forgot about this when I reformatted my computer and lost my bookmarks.  I actually somewhat enjoy the passive/slow style of the Twinoid games.  So I'm reminded to poke this every day or two.

Understanding fuel consumption is a major trick in Aurora.  It basically comes down to three stages.

1: You have warships flying between colonies/fuel points.  These are regular fit warships.  The colonies will have fuel reserves, either processed on-site, or delivered by slow and efficient tankers.  So you have outposts near your campaign area, able to refuel ships that have traveled from your shipyard and are arriving with low fuel.

2: You improve your engines so your ships can be more efficient on fuel, and you run tankers with them.  You bring warships that are slower than normal, and you have tankers that are faster than normal.  These warships have larger engines with lower power modifiers, which can give them the same thrust but higher mass and lower fuel cost - and the tankers have generally the same size engine but higher power modifiers, so they burn a bit more fuel.  These fuel tankers aren't brought into battle, but often sit a system away when the combat force breaks off to go engage.  They're basically booster tanks.  ALSO can be done by tractoring large fuel tanks.

3: You make carriers, with giant, efficient engines that move slowly, but you can move ships that are highly specialized.  Your ships become smaller, with higher burning engines, fighers and FAC.  Your carrier can travel almost anywhere in the universe, but your warships might have trouble crossing half a system because of their low fuel and high burn.  But your carrier is a combat ship, able to provide sensor targets and even area missile defense while your smaller ships deal damage.  Because they no longer carry much fuel or maintenance, your warships have comparable firepower to a regular sized warship, but they've been stripped down to just the guns and armor, lacking long-term sustainability.

The greatest thing about Aurora is the infrastructure.  You NEED to worry about fuel and ammo and armor and keeping your ships running.  Understanding how to utilize fuel tenders is one of the most important facets of running campaigns.  With poor coordination you're limited to local space, but with proper setup you can extend your active theatre to encompass anything you can find.

Work priority type mods are notorious for messing stuff up.  I think "grab me that brick" lets haulers bring materials to construction sites, but that can mess everything up because it redefines what jobs are.

I suspect the storytellers ramp up the difficulty over time, and it gets reset/reduced when you relocate.

You can still fire in melee range, and the 'if I'm hit I have to stop firing and try again' has been removed/nerfed, so you can reliably shoot people who are punching you.  Machine pistols are in fact OP for close quarters.  Combat Realism also lets you carry extra weapons, but that's a big mod so whatever.