Alliance of the Sacred Suns - if CK2, Stellaris, and MOO3 (Emrich Edition) had a strategy baby

[Texashawk]

I’ll get a new reset email out to you shortly!
-S

[KristiGaines]

This brings to mind the hard thing about grouping planets – or just having a system – though it appears here there may be more types of political structures.

Truly it seems the rarity of inhabitable planets in any given system would be low… why not have a earth-like and then a bunch other rocks to mine/build fortresses? Maybe some systems with no inhabitables and some with a couple in the zone.

Sorry I digressed. I need to check out what TH has done here.

[Rod_Humble]

No worries! No rush. If its a common issue something you might wanna be aware of tho. Have a great night, game looks awesome!

[wilykat]

At some point I decided I didn’t need to read any more of the thread. You seem thoughtful and committed and I’m not going to be playing anytime soon but take my money anyway.

[arrendek]

I think it’s this:

[Juan_Raigada]

@Rod_Humble

I want to throw money at you! But website says my email is already registered and yet will not send me a password reset so it wont let me purchase. This happened to anyone else?

This happens to me too! The password reset seems to be broken.

[Madmarcus]

Installs and runs ok on an N3450.

This gives me a slight Aurora 4x vibe after 30 minutes of poking around.

[Grim.Reaper]

@arrendek

hink it’s this:

Ah, ok thanks…the name is actually Portrait Wizard, not Portrait Maker so that is why I couldn’t find it. Thanks again!

[Texashawk]

Thanks! There’s a lot of game in already but I understand if you want to wait for the game to bake a while longer! -S

[Texashawk]

Yup. My mistake! He is correct! -S

[Texashawk]

Well, I love Aurora, and it’s impenetrable as hell, so… thanks? :-D -S

[Texashawk]

I’m looking into this with WordPress Support now. Thanks for the heads-up! -S

[Texashawk]

@FinnegansFather

The tooltips which are included are extremely thorough and helpful. But lots of icons, etc. lack tooltips. Probably my number one issue at the moment, in terms of dealing with the learning curve. Many of them (and acronyms) are tooltipped somewhere, or else explained in the video. But in other places just the icon or acronym. Makes for a slog while learning.

This is a huge priority to finish the tooltips. In fact, I may have an update with just that this month.

@FinnegansFather

When I am in Political mode and click on my home system, I see a Systems ideology Overview. However, some of this is unexpected; for example, during game setup I saw that Neomerican culture was rated 8 for Body Purism but here it says 7. Does that mean it can be changed by game events? Or maybe by my actions? There are two little squares on the spectrum. What does that mean? And each end of the spectrum has, what I thought was the icon for power. Great tooltip saying what each of these cultural categories means, but lots of questions.

So Ideas are a little unfleshed out right now, but there are 3 important ones installed now: Worldliness, Tolerance and Authoritanism. The system box shows the average of the planet Pops’s values on these fields. There is some variance between Pops, but it will stay within a certain value based on their culture. Worldliness affects how much the Pops need things like retail and how likely they are to be unhappy if there is not a large Retail sector and the ADL isn’t high. The closer to a ‘10’ it is, the more the Pops on that planet ‘need’ stuff to buy and a pretty planet. Tolerance affects how happy/unhappy Pops get with more diverse cultures on their planet. It affects unrest, planet happiness, and migration targets. Authoritanism affects how much a ‘strong’ Viceroy (and System Governor) makes the Pops happy - the higher this value is, the more they ‘need’ strong governorship, so putting a weak Viceroy/Governor combo (low Intelligence, low Admin rating, low Government skill) will make these Pops unhappy. I still have some work to do with the UI - those icons at the end are placeholders. I will remove them for the next build.

@FinnegansFather

The concept of a planet and a system are intuitive, and I find them all easily within the interface. But a province? In your video tutorial you address this, but as you actually correct your wording just at that point, and I am unclear as to your meaning. I can find the province governor, but beyond that it seems loosely like the constellation.

Provinces will eventually have their own ‘level screen’ but for now they are limited to affecting the systems within them slightly based on the skills of the province governor. For example, if the PG has a high Farming skill, farming will be slightly more efficient throughout the province. Provinces can only be contained within constellations - they can not span constellations.

@FinnegansFather

The main menu seems to have no “settings” where you can turn off the sound. Actually, “Options” does not work on the main screen either. So I had to exit the game to watch your You Tube tutorial, preventing using it bit by bit and using it to try things in-game.

To be added.

@FinnegansFather

In your video tutorial, you talk about planet ratings such as how good it is at mining rare materials. But is this intrinsic to the planet, or a function of current efficiency?

So each planet has a base rating of materials that represent how easy it is to mine/harvest/collect/whatever that particular resource. This is the rating that is affected by the ability of the mining Pops and the viceroy’s skills, as well as the system governor. The rating you see is the base rating.

@FinnegansFather

And again from the video, the sound goes out just as you go into the jobs on the planet. There are two rows of numbers. Is this potential and filled? Filled and unfilled? (Not clear about all the job icons, either.)

Yes. Filled and unfilled. In other words, you have 10 farms and 8 farmers, for example.

@FinnegansFather

The entire piece about cultural beliefs remains very murky in my mind. I pick a culture at the start, but when I open the game, I find that some of my holdings are of that culture and some are not. Furthermore, on the last setup screen I see two items under culture, not visibly connected to the aspects of the culture I chose, and possibly randomized. Not sure how that fits in.

The two items are the two most ‘affected’ Ideas for that culture, in other words, the most deviant from the norm. Cultures will have more added to them. Not all of your holdings will be that majority culture, representing culture and migration. Remember that the game generates something of a history and things will be different from game to game!

@FinnegansFather

Setup seems to create extremely varied conditions. One time, every single House was in Cold War with me. Another time, three were cooperative, and one of the others was indifferent. Usually the Xyl expected power is 4+k, but another time just 2.7k. Usually my House has vastly more to work with than other Houses, but not always… Is this randomization working as intended?

Yes, there is quite a bit of randomization. For future updates, probably .9, I will add a new screen to better tweak these settings.

@FinnegansFather

I have yet to find anything about Minor Houses.

Minor Houses are in the game, but they have a very - pardon the pun - minor impact at this time. Basically, they are just additional character containers, and do not have their own AI as of yet. This will change by .8.

@FinnegansFather

I see the other Major House Tradition levels, but I am still searching for where mine are given. I find it odd that my House is left out of the Houses Overview.

You have to tooltip your icon at this time. When the Emperor Screen is added, the values will be there as well. I had to remove the House Values to make room for the Emperor Reputation panel.

@FinnegansFather

So far, I am finding navigation through the UI odd. There does not seem to be a way to go back a screen. Right click is the only way out of the current screen and it takes you to the basic home screen… And I see no way to, say, sort characters by intelligence. Or by mining ability… No screen that simply lists your governors and viceroys… So let’s say my analysis of my situation is that I need to upgrade mining heavy materials; it is highly unwieldy to figure out a location that has higher potential than is being utilized. (Not that I understand at this point how to improve it.)

These quality of life enhancements have been on my list for a while - the Intel screen was one where I was like ‘it’s working now, I’ll get back to it soon’ about 7 months ago :-D Navigation is always left click ‘in’, right click ‘out’. This works to zoom in and out of the main screen as well as modal screens.

Hopefully that answers some of your questions! And thank you for asking questions instead of trashing the game as ‘it doezn’t work rite’ and throwing a fit. I fully admit the documentation is not up to speed and I’m committed to improving it significantly in short order!

-S

[FinnegansFather]

Thank you for the very detailed answers. Lots cleared up, I understand almost everything (all except “Filled and unfilled. In other words, you have 10 farms and 8 farmers” which to my mind has two opposite meanings). I really like what you are doing with Worldliness, Tolerance, and Authoritarianism.

And thank you for the reassurance. I tend to miss things in game interfaces, but it looks like most things I was missing are things that simply are not there yet. Which is totally fine, we all understand that this is a work in progress.

[Sonoftgb]

@FinnegansFather

you have 10 farms and 8 farmers” which to my mind has two opposite meanings)

I don’t have the game yet, but I’m guessing this really means 10 potential farms on the planet but only 8 are being worked.

[Texashawk]

FYI, I have a support ticket for the reset password issue. If you need to reset your password please message me with your username on the website and I’ll send you a new one!

[Grifman]

Ok, i have a design question here. It appears that game has a ton of detailed information - yet we can only make a limited number of high level decisions each turn. There seems to be a disconnect here, IMO. The level of detail seems to be inconsistent with the level of decision making. Why have all of these individual planets with all of this detail? Why not go with the lowest level being the system, rather than planets. Given the number and level of decisions that I can make each turn, it seems that there is just too much detail information available. it seems to be that if I need to make a decision, I need to understand that decision in the light of no more than a handful of variables, otherwise decision making becomes too complicated and too unwieldy. And information needs to be appropriate to the level of decision making.

Those are my thoughts, feel free to correct any erroneous impressions I might have made.

[Texashawk]

Sure! Good question. The UI design was made so that those who wanted to drill down into the nitty gritty could, while those that just wanted to see ‘top level’ results can use just the summary planet and system boxes. Or, they can drill down into one specific thing like production or migration. Eventually, you will be able to do about 80+ Actions and 50+ Projects, as well as assign and create Inquisitor squads, direct military actions, and utilize science, so you will have more to do. Think of the entire AotSS system as tightly coupled, where if you ‘pull’ on a thread in one area, you can indirectly control a system in another area, but you can only pull a limited number of threads that have a direct influence on the system they are attached to. I hope that makes sense. -S

[FinnegansFather]

I found and enjoyed this You Tube video from about a year ago:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DLUH1JX6cI

[Sonoftgb]

I watched it as well but wonder how much has changed since then.