If you hate micromanagement and DF is an anathema to you, don't bother. Okay, enough of a rant - the game needs to be experienced to be believed. Cargo freighters have ferried infrastructure and terraforming plants to Mars and the Red Planet is soon ready for a limited colonization effort.
I almost lost "Thor Heyerdahl" as its poor captain miscalculated fuel usage and ran out of fuel just beyond Mars orbit, but "Henry Hudson" was sent to the rescue: the two ships docked fuel lines and "Henry Hudson" gave half of her fuel to her sister ship, so they could journey back home together. My four geological survey ships, "Leif Ericsson", "Thor Heyerdahl", "Henry Hudson" and "Yuri Gagarin" have explored all the asteroids, planets, moons and comets in our solar system, except for that pesky one with such an ellipsical orbit that it's really hard to catch it while it's not too far away.
#Aurora 4x graphics mod drivers#
Mass drivers on Mars, Mercury, Venus and Luna deliver mineral packets back to Earth for processing, as the cradle of humanity is being drained. In a year or two I'll have my Gravitational Survey Ships ready to search for jump point so I can start expanding beyond the solar system. I've played 37 years in-game now and my nascent civilization has reached the stage of asteroid mining and Mars terraforming. On top of that you have a robust research system, HoI3-style officer management mini-game, economy and industry to worry abut and zillion other little things. Anyway, just ship design is awesome, with so many options available. I haven't read any AARs or anything since I don't want to be spoiled about the alien civilizations and so on. It works, though bit funky and the amount of detail in it is staggering. Lot of spread sheets and a rudimentary 2D map. Yes, it's basically Dwarf Fortress as a 4X. Here's download links for the actual game and installation guide: Thanks to Destroid for pointing this out to me and also ensuring that I won't have any free time to do anything else in the near future.