As I mentioned Aurora in the 4X space games thread, I thought I would post an example of play. This is an excerpt from an after action report for a recent Aurora campaign. My AAR style is a little involved so I am going to add some game-related text in italics after each AAR paragraph to provide some examples of actual gameplay. Alpha Centauri was first visited by ships of the Federation Navy in February 2070 and the Minerva colony was established in September 2071. Both civilian and government-owned colony ships had been bringing new colonists for almost a year and by August 2072 the population was 1.7 million. Throughout that time there had been no sign of any alien presence. In fact, despite the discovery of ruins and a jump gate in 70 Ophuichi, there was no sign of any contemporary extra-solar intelligence anywhere in the thirty-seven systems of known space. Which made the events of August 16th 2072 all the more shocking. A Jamestown class colony ship of the Heidelberg Colony Company had arrived in Alpha Centauri at 06:00 Zulu time and headed for the Minerva colony, maintaining regular contact with the colony's traffic control. For ten and a half hours the routine mission to deliver 50,000 cryogenically frozen colonists proceeded without incident. Without any warning, at 16:33 hours seven large nuclear detonations registered on the colony's sensors at the same location as the colony ship. Within moments, life pod beacons began broadcasting with the colony ship's ID signature. I try to use use real world terms in Aurora as much as possible so colonies are tracked in terms of actual people, dates and times are our standard calendar and distances are all in kilometers. In this particular campaign, the 'real stars' option is being used, which means that Aurora is creating systems based on actual stars. The planetary systems are still randomly generated (based on the star type) but if you enter Alpha Centauri then it will have a G2-V primary and a K1-V companion at 23 AU. The real life 3D celestial coordinates of each system are being used so entering a jump point will very likely connect to a nearby system in real space. There are 1800 real star systems in the DB. In a game with random systems, the number is effectively unlimited. Aurora has the concept of civilian shipping lines. Each shipping line is a company independent of the player's control and each Empire will have one or more shipping lines. The shipping lines generate an income from moving colonists, passengers and trade goods between colonies of the parent Empire. Inter-Empire trade is possible when a trade agreement is signed, in which case you can have civilian ships of both Empires trading among both sets of colonies. The civilians work out the best trade runs for themselves based on the surplus and shortages of sixteen different trade goods on each colony. They will avoid systems where there has been recent combat unless the player stations sufficient warships in that system to overcome their concerns. Civilian ships are treated as alien ships for the purpose of detection by thermal, EM and active sensors. However, they do emit transponder codes which can be detected by any ship in the same system. The player can set some systems as no transponder zones so the civilians don't attract alien raiders but then the civs look like aliens to passive sensors. The Empires generate part of their own income from taxing the shipping lines so it is in their interest to protect civilian shipping. In the case of the AAR paragraph above, a civilian ship was transporting colonists in what I believed to be a safe system when it was hit by seven missiles from an unknown (i.e. undetected) source. Colony ships are not designed to take punishment and the missiles had sizeable warheads so it was destroyed. In Aurora, destroyed ships leave wrecks that can be salvaged for raw materials, intact components and technical data. Salvaging alien wrecks is a good source of research information. They also leave life pods with the surviving crew (casualties are calculated as the ship takes hits). The missile explosions can be detected at a great distance so you might only realise two warring alien races are in the same system as you when you detect such explosions. There were no other civilian or Federation Navy ships in the system and Minerva's governor was aware the 1.7 million civilians for which he was responsible were totally defenceless. The destruction of the Heidelberg colony ship took place 1.4 billion kilometres away so he fervently hoped the unseen alien attackers were unaware of its existence. He immediately sent a message to Earth via the jump gate network that connected Alpha Centauri to Sol via Proxima Centauri, requesting urgent assistance. In the life pods surrounding the wreckage of the colony ship were just 101 survivors of the crew of 386. The 50,000 frozen colonists stood no chance at all. In this case the attacking ship was from a computer-controlled race. The AI has to detect its targets just like the player so as the Minerva colony is small and its emissions signature is weak, there is still a good chance it hasn't been spotted. A pair of jump gates connects Alpha Centauri to the Proxima Centauri system. This allows ships without jump engines to travel between the two systems and also maintains a communication link. Jump gates can be built by ships equipped with a jump gate construction module. With a hostile alien force in a system just two jumps from Earth, the first priority was to secure the safety of any unarmed vessels near the combat area. Two groups of government-owned colony ships were in Proxima Centauri, one heading back from the recently established colony on Proxima II and the second en route to Minerva. The three Jamestown class ships in the second colony fleet were ordered to return to Sol immediately and unload their colonists on Mars. The Proxima II colony would have to be out of bounds to commercial traffic as well as it was just sixty-three million kilometres from the Proxima - Alpha Centauri jump point. Three Genesis class terraformers were in orbit of Proxima II so they were ordered to pull out and head back to the Sol system. Unfortunately, at 652 km/s, they couldn't run very fast.  A jump gate construction ship was in Lacaille 9352, building a jump gate connection to Proxima. As the gate was one third completed, the ship was ordered to remain on station. Five of the eight survey ships were in overhaul while the others were deployed in Struve 2398 and Gliese 674, adjacent to Proxima and Alpha Centauri respectively. Both systems were outside the limited jump gate network and therefore outside of communication range.    The player doesn't have to rely on civilian-owned colony ships as he can build his own. In this case, with an unknown alien force in an adjacent system, the player (me) decided to pull those government-owned colony ships out of potential harms way. Aurora uses fairly realistic system generation routines, which can result in a system with up to four stars and hundreds of detailed system bodies, including planets, moons, asteroids and comets. Because of the realism element, ideal habitable worlds are pretty rare. Its far more likely to find a planet with a breathable atmosphere (breathable to humans that is) that is too hot or too cold, or a planet with a suitable temperature but that lacks sufficient oxygen pressure or has a gas such as chlorine in the atmosphere. Terraforming installations can be built or Terraforming ships can be designed that can modify the atmosphere. This take a lot of time and effort (usually several years of game time in a game where the minimum time increment is five seconds) but will eventually result in a habitable world. You can still colonise less than ideal worlds but you will need infrastructure to support the colonists. The amount of infrastructure required will depend on the number of colonists, atmospheric content/pressure, temperature, etc. Civilians can usually be relied on to ship in the infrastructure once the demand exists. Three of the five destroyer squadrons were on training exercises in the inner Sol system so they were all ordered to return to Earth for refuelling and resupply. The Fourth Destroyer Squadron was at full strength and in Earth orbit but the four ships had never trained together so I regarded their deployment to Alpha Centauri as risky, while the Fifth Destroyer Squadron still lacked a jump cruiser. The First and Second Squadrons had the most experience so they would be sent to Alpha Centauri with the Third deployed to Proxima II as a reserve force. The Fourth and Fifth would guard Earth. Aurora has an option for inexperienced crews. When this option is in play, there may be a delay in fleets responding to orders, depending on how familiar the ships in that fleet are with working together. You can set fleets in a training exercise mode where they will move around a system, near to the Task Force HQ for that fleet, and slowly gain Fleet Training Points. The more points the ships have, the faster they will respond to orders. Maintaining reserves in a good idea in Aurora for a couple of reasons. Threats can popup from a lot of directions at once so you don't want to be committed to a single front. Also, colonies of greater than ten million get upset if you don't provide them with sufficient protection based on their size. Move your ships away and unrest begins to grow. At 11:42 on August 17th, nineteen hours after the destruction of the colony ship, a new disaster struck. The three Genesis class terraformers had only moved forty-five million kilometres from Proxima II when they came under missile attack. The unknown and unseen aliens were now in the Proxima Centauri system as well, just one jump from Earth. The first salvo destroyed one of the huge 57,000 ton terraforming ships. 186 survivors made it to the life pods out of a crew of 561. Two minutes later a second salvo arrived and a second Terraformer exploded. The remaining ship continued to run blindly, not even aware of the direction from which the missiles were arriving. For two and a half hours, the ship held her course and the crew held its collective breath. Then, at 14:17, two active sensors were detected by the Terraformer's extremely limited EM sensors at a distance of just six million kilometres. Strangely, the two alien ships appeared to be on a direct course for the lifepods from Genesis 002 rather than attempting to intercept the surviving Terraformer. Even more than the fate of the lone surviving Terraformer, my most pressing concern was the speed of the alien ships. At 5833 km/s they were almost fifty percent faster than the Federation Navy's own warships. Their size and full capabilities were still entirely unknown. The unknown aliens that attacked in Alpha Centauri had moved into Proxima, probably because they detected the transit of the Heidelberg colony ship into Alpha Centauri and after destroying that ship they decided to investigate the jump point. Aurora computer-players will create waypoints for anything they find interesting and then go back and check those waypoints when they have nothing more important to do. The Terraformers being attacked had extremely limited sensors so at this point I still had no idea what I was up against, except for the high speed. All alien ship designs are unique to each race based on whatever tech was generated when that race was created plus whatever they may research. You have no idea what you are going to come up against. Different areas of tech may also advance at different rates so high speed does not necessarily mean advanced weapons/electronics and vice versa. The terrafomers did detect alien active sensor emissions, in a similar way to modern ESM picking up radar emissions, but didn't get any thermal readings and didn't possess active sensors. The reason that the alien ships are heading for the life pods is so they can interrogate the survivors. You can get intelligence points from interrogations, especially if you capture an officer (with more IP from higher ranks). This is reduced significantly if you haven't translated the alien language yet. IP can end up providing you with tech, survey data, information on alien ship designs, etc. The brief contact with the alien sensors was lost at 14:34. At 14:37 the beacons of the Genesis 002 life pods ceased transmission. Apparently the aliens had picked up the 134 survivors, although whether the alien motivation was some misplaced sense of honour or a desire to find subjects for interrogation was purely conjecture. Five minutes later, the Genesis 003 life pods vanished from sensors as well. The flight of Genesis 001 continued and still the mysterious aliens did not interfere. At 19:41, eight hours after the loss of her two sister ships, the first Federation Navy warships entered Proxima from Sol. The Third Destroyer Squadron comprised the jump cruiser Haruna, the Agincourt class destroyers Balaclava and Crecy and the Guardian class escort Defender. Instead of her original mission to stand in reserve at the Proxima II colony, she was now ordered to hold at the Proxima - Sol jump point to warn of any intruder. Once the First and Second Destroyer Squadrons arrived in Proxima, they would advance toward the colony as a combined force. At 09:37 on August 18th, with the Terraformer still making slow progress toward the Sol jump point, the eight ships of the First and Second Destroyer Squadrons left the Third Squadron at the jump point and set their course for Proxima II. Fortunately, both the Proxima II colony and the Minerva colony had been either ignored by the aliens or somehow remained undetected. Commanding the overall force was Commodore Cornelius Hilgendorf, of the Second Destroyer Squadron, from the destroyer Waterloo. The First and Third were under the command of Commodore Robert Rowley and Commodore Alexandra Perry respectively. Commanders are very important in Aurora as they have a wide variety of different skills. Administrators can boost differnet areas of colony output, Scientists can speed up research and Naval and Army officers can significantly improve the performance of their ship or unit. One example is that Ship commanders have a crew training rating that they use to raise their crew's performance over time. This affects weapons fire, maintenance failures etc. Commanders are trained by Military Acadamies and you can increase the rate of Commander 'production' by building more acadamies. There is a rank structure and commanders can be promoted over time. As you can end up with thousands of Commanders in a long campaign, there is an option for Aurora to handle promotion and assignments based on each commander's abilities, whih you can override on an individual basis. Commanders gain experience depending on their assigned role, can become ill and retire, can die in accidents, leave the service if they are not assigned to anything for several years or be forced to retire due to old age. The First and Second Destroyer Squadrons passed the outbound Terraformer at 09:30 on August 22nd. Six hours later, at 15:08, the huge FN/SPY-11 Area Search Sensors on the jump cruisers Kongo and Kirishima detected six alien ships, all of which were 9550 tons and therefore sixty percent larger than the warships of the Federation Navy. They were located just eighteen million kilometres beyond Proxima II but there was still no sign of any attacks against the colony. Confronted by a faster alien force that out-massed his own, Commodore Hilgendorf could be excused for exercising discretion and pulling back his ships or at least calling for reinforcements. However, he knew that the defences of Earth could not be reduced and that Fleet Admiral Shaw would not uncover the Proxima - Sol jump point in case a second alien force was lurking nearby. Furthermore, there were 680,000 colonists on Proxima II and another 1.7 million on Minerva, located beyond the jump point to Alpha Centauri. Finally the fact that the third Terraformer had been allowed to flee the area suggested the aliens could be short of ammunition, so he elected to advance to within the sixty million kilometre range of his missiles, assuming the aliens would let him, and open fire. 'Commodore Hilgendorf' is me thinking out loud . I finally got a look at the alien ships. Six of them, all big and fast, unfortunately. However, they weren't firing at anything and given their hostility so far I was working on the assumption they had fired all their ordnance. As it's 1.30am here and I have to be up in the morining, I'll continue this example tomorrow when the Fed ships open fire. EDIT: The Aurora forums are at: http://aurora.pentarch.org/index.php There are plenty of forums you can browse as a guest but you will need to register to download the latest version (which is free btw). I tried attaching a screenshot to this message but the image quality seems to have suffered for some reason. There are much better screenshots on the Aurora forums, especially in the fiction section Steve

le mec fait le spectacle donc ça passe. C'est marrant, tu peux voir le jeu si t'as pas envie de te faire chier, il fait des montages cool et aucun blanc, etc.

Sinon au niveau gameplay, à la manette c'est bon, y'a que le lock avec plusieurs ennemis qui peut poser problème quand on veut tourner autour alors que y'a d'autres ennemis à côté.