Aurora 4x game: a science fiction writer's best friend
To prepare for a coming fleet battle off Jupiter, what type of rocket engine, sensors and manuverability should be researched and developed for long-distance anti-missile defense? Where will the primary corporate shipping lanes from the asteroid belt to Earth be located and how should they be protected? Should I create temporary task forces and deploy them to protect my settlements against my enemy, or should I build orbital defense bases? How do I balance and manage defense and grow my colonies without breaking the bank or inciting insurrection?
Courtesy of Rock Paper Shotgun
It's one thing to daydream ideas. It's another to role-play them out. For years (over a decade now), I have used an excellent game to assist me in writing my science fiction. It's called Aurora 4x - the "x" stands for eXpand, eXplore, eXploit and eXterminate. Oh, and it’s free.
Technically, I suppose, it's a game. But the depth and scope it provides is far beyond any game I have played before. For me, it's like combining the old fleet simulation game Harpoon, Command Modern Operations, Civilization and a bit of Eve Online, all rolled into a massive role-playing simulation where I can get as detailed as the person's name and resume I have assigned to a task force to protect a settlement on Callisto. Yeah... it gets down to a crazy level of detail.
Courtesy of Sufficient Velocity
Courtesy of Sufficient Velocity
That level depth of depth does come at a cost. It's not very user friendly, there is a massive learning curve and the graphics are very 1990's, but that's OK. Its power is in allowing me to explore what-if scenarios and play them out. To help in my writing, I have even gone so far as to create 3D models of some of the ship components within Aurora 4x in Sketchup so I could create visual representations of my completed ships. Like Build-A-Bear, but with fire control systems!
My ship component selection
Colonial Defense Union Drone Carrier
Side note, during the pandemic I got bored and actually scratch built the CDU carrier based on the Sketchup model.
Fun with styrene
There has been plenty of ink/pixels spent to review and give insight into Aurora 4x so I'm not going to do that here. You can get that here or here. What I will say is that if you plan to write military science fiction, space operas, etc, Aurora 4x is like a giant sandbox to test out your ideas and becomes a valuable resource to add depth and realism to your story.