Patroklos
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2003
- Messages
- 12,721
Hello!
So I recently started playing Aurora, a 4X game created by one guy and developed in his free time. I am a long time avid player of the Space Empires series but sadly that franchise committed suicide with SEV. Since then I have tried a few supposed successors but I haven't found anything with the same level of dept and role play capabilities. Very few people create whole volumes of "Jane's Fighting Starships" as an exercise in fun, but that's pretty much what every game of SEIII/IV was for me and at long last I think I have found a in this game something that replicates that and goes FAR beyond.
This game, however, has a very steep learning curve and very few bells and whistles as far as sound and visuals go (it is routinely described as Dwarf Fortress IN SPACE!) so you need to have a healthy imagination and if I am going to go full bore RPG why not share my efforts with my favorite message board community (whether you like it or not)?
So I am going to walk through a game in character as both a fun RPG scenario as well as an interactive way of learning. I have played a couple starts for about 50 odd years or so but am still an extreme newcomer to this game so I will be learning as I go. If any of you have played this before and can bestow some wisdom please feel free to drop it on me as I go, or if you are new to this as well we can stumble through it together.
You can find the game here
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php
So, first of...
INTRODUCTION
In the year 2050 a nuclear world war breaks out. Despite the name the war itself was not particular devastating given the arsenals involved, though tens of millions die. After an initial nuclear exchange all sides are horrified and an unheard of level of cooperation is ushered in by the Treaty of Beijing in 2051. Mankind had gone over the precipice but has somehow pulled itself back and the dawn of a new age of cooperation and achievement opened before them.
Unfortunately while the long feared specter of nuclear war was not to be the harbinger of the apocalypse, the weapons of the war continued their work long after the peace treaty had been signed. On the cusp of the a manned mission of Mars undertaken to show the fruits of human cooperation and progress in this new post war age, a disaster slowly but surely spreads across the globe.
While the powerful nations of the world subjected the horrors of nuclear war on the entire globe, other nations determined to not stand idle while their fate was dictated to them had release biological weapons that they believed would level the playing field with the belligerent great powers. Their use proved destructive but not strategically effective and horrible retribution was exacted on those who used these weapons by the great powers. The hypocrisy of this crack down while having just nearly destroyed the world via nuclear holocaust also became a driving force ending the war.
Ineffective and largely thought overcome by various means by the end of the war, these agents laid silent until 2060 when they began to reappear throughout the globe in myriad mutated forms and by 2065 all efforts to stop their spread proved futile. People died by the billions. However, due to the horrors of the recent world war and the new age of cooperation and peace that followed the often predicted chaos of such a disaster characterized in B-movies of a half century before did not transpire. Nations did not bear their teeth to each other to grab what resources they could in their death throws, they shared freely and worked together to save what could be saved. Citizens did not recoil in horror from their neighbors but sacrificed themselves to help each other in any way possible. Despite this cities and nations withered and died and humanity systenatically drew itself back from the world, concentrating itself in enclaves they defended fiercely but imperfectly, billions more would die. By 2100 the crisis quickly subsided via a combination most of the population left being immune and that immunity being extended to others via a new method of gene manipulation. Four hundred million humans remained of the nine and a half billion who lived before the war.
Mankind collects itself and establishes a new society with what they have saved and based on the lessens they had learned. Having just survived two near extinctions events of their own creation within a half century, humanity looks at the future as a gift rather than birthright and is determined to do things different this time. After fifty years they look back out at the world they abandoned from their now crowded enclaves. They reenter long abandoned cities and break the carefully placed seals on factories and capitals, museums and universities and the wounds of their loss open fresh again. The optimism and ambition of the past so much a part of what makes up humanity is reignited, but the hubris and arrogance of the past is also rediscovered and this time rejected. From their new homes built on the ashes of those of their grandfathers their gaze is not fixed on the new forests and savannahs and swamps and marshes that had reclaimed most of the old world, but rather to the stars above.
Staring back at them from orbit in their tombs of long since vacuum filled capsules, the wry skeletal smiles of the last humans to dream the same dream were both scolding and inspiring. They had seen it all, with eyes at first prideful and arrogant but later moist and then frozen, propelled to a new frontier on the fiery arrogance of a now dead age and had then watched the decline of man at their own hands. They would now watch them rise anew, fueled by a desire to reclaim what was once before within reach...
Start Screen
Starting Screenshots
So I recently started playing Aurora, a 4X game created by one guy and developed in his free time. I am a long time avid player of the Space Empires series but sadly that franchise committed suicide with SEV. Since then I have tried a few supposed successors but I haven't found anything with the same level of dept and role play capabilities. Very few people create whole volumes of "Jane's Fighting Starships" as an exercise in fun, but that's pretty much what every game of SEIII/IV was for me and at long last I think I have found a in this game something that replicates that and goes FAR beyond.
This game, however, has a very steep learning curve and very few bells and whistles as far as sound and visuals go (it is routinely described as Dwarf Fortress IN SPACE!) so you need to have a healthy imagination and if I am going to go full bore RPG why not share my efforts with my favorite message board community (whether you like it or not)?
So I am going to walk through a game in character as both a fun RPG scenario as well as an interactive way of learning. I have played a couple starts for about 50 odd years or so but am still an extreme newcomer to this game so I will be learning as I go. If any of you have played this before and can bestow some wisdom please feel free to drop it on me as I go, or if you are new to this as well we can stumble through it together.
You can find the game here
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php
So, first of...
INTRODUCTION
In the year 2050 a nuclear world war breaks out. Despite the name the war itself was not particular devastating given the arsenals involved, though tens of millions die. After an initial nuclear exchange all sides are horrified and an unheard of level of cooperation is ushered in by the Treaty of Beijing in 2051. Mankind had gone over the precipice but has somehow pulled itself back and the dawn of a new age of cooperation and achievement opened before them.
Unfortunately while the long feared specter of nuclear war was not to be the harbinger of the apocalypse, the weapons of the war continued their work long after the peace treaty had been signed. On the cusp of the a manned mission of Mars undertaken to show the fruits of human cooperation and progress in this new post war age, a disaster slowly but surely spreads across the globe.
While the powerful nations of the world subjected the horrors of nuclear war on the entire globe, other nations determined to not stand idle while their fate was dictated to them had release biological weapons that they believed would level the playing field with the belligerent great powers. Their use proved destructive but not strategically effective and horrible retribution was exacted on those who used these weapons by the great powers. The hypocrisy of this crack down while having just nearly destroyed the world via nuclear holocaust also became a driving force ending the war.
Ineffective and largely thought overcome by various means by the end of the war, these agents laid silent until 2060 when they began to reappear throughout the globe in myriad mutated forms and by 2065 all efforts to stop their spread proved futile. People died by the billions. However, due to the horrors of the recent world war and the new age of cooperation and peace that followed the often predicted chaos of such a disaster characterized in B-movies of a half century before did not transpire. Nations did not bear their teeth to each other to grab what resources they could in their death throws, they shared freely and worked together to save what could be saved. Citizens did not recoil in horror from their neighbors but sacrificed themselves to help each other in any way possible. Despite this cities and nations withered and died and humanity systenatically drew itself back from the world, concentrating itself in enclaves they defended fiercely but imperfectly, billions more would die. By 2100 the crisis quickly subsided via a combination most of the population left being immune and that immunity being extended to others via a new method of gene manipulation. Four hundred million humans remained of the nine and a half billion who lived before the war.
Mankind collects itself and establishes a new society with what they have saved and based on the lessens they had learned. Having just survived two near extinctions events of their own creation within a half century, humanity looks at the future as a gift rather than birthright and is determined to do things different this time. After fifty years they look back out at the world they abandoned from their now crowded enclaves. They reenter long abandoned cities and break the carefully placed seals on factories and capitals, museums and universities and the wounds of their loss open fresh again. The optimism and ambition of the past so much a part of what makes up humanity is reignited, but the hubris and arrogance of the past is also rediscovered and this time rejected. From their new homes built on the ashes of those of their grandfathers their gaze is not fixed on the new forests and savannahs and swamps and marshes that had reclaimed most of the old world, but rather to the stars above.
Staring back at them from orbit in their tombs of long since vacuum filled capsules, the wry skeletal smiles of the last humans to dream the same dream were both scolding and inspiring. They had seen it all, with eyes at first prideful and arrogant but later moist and then frozen, propelled to a new frontier on the fiery arrogance of a now dead age and had then watched the decline of man at their own hands. They would now watch them rise anew, fueled by a desire to reclaim what was once before within reach...
Start Screen
Spoiler :
Starting Screenshots
Spoiler :
