Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X

Has anyone played this gem of a game?

It's a freeware space-based 4X that allows you to create a procedurally generated galaxy with star systems connected to each other by warp points.

The guy who made this apparently made it to help him write fiction. So while it's perfectly playable, the game is more of a Roleplaying tool.

You can build colonies, terraform planets, mine asteroids, invade other star systems and much more. The level of detail is really staggering.

For example, it adds another whole level of complexity to unit creation. You have to manually design components for ships, fighters and missiles in order to research and use them in ship designs. You have leaders you can assign to different posts, and they can rise in rank realistically. You can even create scenarios with multiple factions starting off on the same planet.

Essentially, Aurora combines Dwarf Fortress open world gameplay and simulation with War in the Pacific levels of complexity, all in an excellent space 4X format.

Links to the Forum and Wiki.

edited 4th Jun '12 9:49:29 PM by Icecreamcart

It also has DF's (lack of) UI.

Dwarf Fortress plus 4X. o_o I don't think my brain is willing to handle that.

I have to salute the guy who made this, though. All this for his writing? That's really awesome.

Oh, so it was THIS game, not Achron that I heard about...

So where to get it to install it?

Also, from what I see, it doesn't have any graphics so its like text based game? Wow, it beat DF in that department xD Edit: oh wait, it does have graphics. I think. Still looks chart based.

edited 29th May '12 7:39:04 AM by SpookyMask

@Spooky: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1830.0.html

I downloaded it not too long ago, but I haven't started it. Gonna hold off until later.

EDIT: version 5.60 is out.patch is in the forum I linked to, but not that topic

edited 29th May '12 11:51:13 AM by Enkufka

Apparently, the Aurora page for Tvtropes is locked.

If we make a new page for this game, would we put it as Aurora, or Videogame/Aurora as there's no work that currently uses the name here?

This sounds a lot like the Space Empires series.

It's a lot like GalCiv, but more detailed.

My understanding is it goes on Videogame.Aurora.

Well that's being taken by a completely different game; specifically an interactive fiction one.

edited 5th Jun '12 10:17:56 PM by thatother1dude

I just split the VideoGame.Aurora page, and made it into a disambiguation page.

Feel Free to Add stuff to the Aurora 4X page if you can.

edited 8th Jun '12 10:01:50 AM by Icecreamcart