Aurora

[Echo35]

Some of you may have heard of this before, but I figured I'd post it here since I could probably think of a few people this would appeal to. I saw this on the Hearts of Iron forums (Oddly enough) and a second time on the GoG forums for Master of Orion, so I figured I'd check it out. The tl;dr version is that it's the Dwarf Fortress of 4X games (Largely text based interface, incredibly complicated, much more detailed than it really needs to be, etc).

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php

Been stumbling around and learning it for the past few days, but I'm getting the hang of it now. Started up some mines on the Moon and built some Mass Accelerators to fling the mined minerals back to Earth, and dropped some terraformers on there just to see if I could make an atmosphere stick (Seems to be working, oddly enough). Built some rail gun based ships too for some general defense. The game has the Mass Effect style of "realistic but fanciful" in terms of the technology involved (Lasers are invisible and largely short range, low damage things for CIWS systems and defense, while the bulk of the damaging weapons involve rail guns and nukes). You even have control over your officer assignments and fleet task groups, and have to research each individual component (Or factor of a component. For example, the previously mentioned CIWS systems consist of 5 base technologies that can be researched up individually). You even build ships component by component. Travel in system is sub light, and systems have a number of jump points that you can open up wormholes through using jump ships or gates. The other end of the jump will drop you off a random distance from the exit point (Also determined by technology) which makes launching attacks interesting. Said combat involves newtonian physics. I could go on for a while, but it's definitely worth looking into if you can get past the almost entirely text based interface and sheer complication (Definitely up there with Dwarf Fortress).

[Cyborg]

fantastic, another 'awesome' game buried in text. On the plus side, it doesn't use all the strange symbols. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of explanatory literature on this. I will wait for the youtube videos, of which I cannot find any.

[Echo35]

fantastic, another 'awesome' game buried in text. On the plus side, it doesn't use all the strange symbols. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of explanatory literature on this. I will wait for the youtube videos, of which I cannot find any.

There's a few tutorials floating around, which got me started enough that I can experiment and fail until I learn more Reminds me a lot of pen and paper games, which evidently, it is based on.

[zespri]

Nice, thank you for posting this.

[Ozymandiaz]

fantastic, another 'awesome' game buried in text. On the plus side, it doesn't use all the strange symbols. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of explanatory literature on this. I will wait for the youtube videos, of which I cannot find any.

For some reason I enjoy text based games. I love DF, and I used to like Xenocide3001 (later recreated as Imperial Kingdoms) before it went totally inactive. I also played another text based browser game 10 years ago... ogame or some such.

If not text, symboles are fine as well, like in AI war and Star Ruler (even SupCom 1), were I spend most of my time zoomed out


But, tbh, DF did take some time to get used to, but was great fun when I did. Some streamlining of UI is never a bad thing, so long as one do not remove features

Aurora does sound interesting, I must check it out.

[superking]

This looks like the kind of game that gives your virginity back.. I tried to get into it and gave up after an hour of being bombarded with unexplained screens of number boxes and icons. Would it have been so hard to make it at least a little user friendly?

[Echo35]

Would it have been so hard to make it at least a little user friendly?

It's like DF. He's not making it for YOU

[superking]

DF is suprisingly user friendly, its just ugly

[eRe4s3r]

Only graphics can be ugly, DF is an (badly) animated spreadsheet  *ducks*

[Cyborg]

dwarf Fortress is so user-friendly that it:

a) tells you what you can/need to build
b) tells you the build hierarchies
c) has mouse control to designate areas
d) has an easy to use save game feature
e) has ToolTips for the different objects you can find
g) has vector or raster graphics
h) is often written about for its user-friendly interface

I think dwarf Fortress is a heckuva good time, mentally stimulating, but let's be real here... It's like looking into the matrix if you do not play with any mods.

[Entrenched Homperson]

"Eventualy, you learn to understand it, The Matrix. See that? That's a sports car. And that? A baby. And see that wonked out string of crazy symbols going in circles? That's a man playing Dwarf Fortress. "
           - Computer Dude of the Fancyship in The Matrix to Neo, the one.

[superking]

Dwarf fortress with any decent tileset can be picked up quickly. Aurora cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be picked up quickly.

[eRe4s3r]

While DF can be picked up quickly with a good tileset.. it starts to creep to a halt late-game, theres just no fun managing spreadsheets, but thats exactly what you have to do to quickly assign jobs, warrior equipment etc. And ye even need an additional app to do that, because the DF coder is apparently not able to code something with a GUI.

Also, DF would be a better game were it isometric or some other kind of 2.5d

[deMangler]

I have recently started playing this. Loving it so far.
Me being from the generation that whenever you learned new software you learned a new UI helps because I don't automatically feel that non-standardisation in a UI is bad. Having been a designer of  front-ends, and a VB (*twitch*!) programmer (this game is in VB, shudder!) I know that sometimes UI standardisation is a compromise you wish you didn't have to make. Looks like this guy is doing his own thing for his own reasons, and having played with it a bit I must say I like it for all it's quirkyness.
In any case, having spent some time with this game, I am very glad  I bothered with the learning curve. There is defintely a steep one. And it is on-going. It is part of the fun.
Also I love the way the whole thing is a structure for your own imagination, without too much graphics to get in the way. There is just enough information provided to give you the game (and it is a good one), without spoiling your immersion with thier idea of how things should look. This is something I like about AI war also.
Mind you - me being one of those types who entertain ourselves by, I dunno, reading books, and stuff, probably helps with the creating an inner world out of text and graphs too...... 

As far as it being the DF of  space 4x's goes..... I can see why that comparison comes out. The universe pretty much gets on with it's immensely complex thing, and your job is to be a part of making the whole story work out for your civilisation, as a kind of head governor. Actually the micromanagement is not that bad, you can set up a lot of conditional automatic stuff when you get the hang of it, and I am only just scratching the surface at the moment.
However, the fact it is turn based is a massive difference from DF. It makes for a much better contemplative strategy experience.
Anyway - Good reccomendation. Having lots of fun. I haven't played Skyrim for days now....
Back to my little people now... Click Click, 

[Mánagarmr]

Visual Basic? Why? Omg why? That hellspawn of a "language" should never have been allowed to see the light of day.