Starters guide

[celludriel]

Hey,

I was wondering if any of the more advanced players could put up a guide on how to get started. I've played about five games now and each game the har'kan whipe me out. I have decent economy +7b a turn about 5 sytems with 8 or 10 colonies, they declare war and come at me with tons of ground forces and a fleet of like 50 ships. This all in a classic normal gamemode ... this is getting a bit ridicolous. A little bit of guidance as in ship to planet ratio or tech upgrade to ship ratio would be nice to have !

Thanks in advance

[FrozenFallout]

Sure I have been thinking about this for a while now and wanted to wait for a stable version that didnt make huge changes to the game so the guild will be valid for longer then a month. By the end of Feb I will probably have one posted here and I plan on doing a lets play as well.

[celludriel]

That would be great, I tried another game yesterday

I had around 9 planets split over 4 systems, without any fleet around 22B a turn. Then some race declared war on me and I started building a fleet of a mothership, 8 cruisers and a few scouts and mediums. In the end my income was 4B a turn. Then I met a fleet of another race (I luckly was allied with). 7 motherships around 20 scouts, a few mediums and cruisers .... I just pressed ALT+F4. I can't contend with those numbers !!! either the AI is cheating or ship maintenance needs to be taken out of the game so I can actual compete with the AI !

[bidusv1]

Ha that was exactly what I experienced in my first 5 games and complained here about it too ,the harkans and their tech and imba transporter fleets.I don't know your whole setup, I only played games on 9planets per system and large galaxy.While the AI seems so imbalanced and strong like first 150 turns, after that he fails to colonize new planets.I have seen harkans on many systems with 6-9 planets, only using 1-2 for very long time.....

But I learned a couple of very nice tricks and now the game seems much more balanced and nice.
First thing you do when you start, design a colony ship.Delete all weapons and equip it with colonny pods and 2 supply bays, buyout the first 2 ,colonize if possible 2 new systems,not Mars,always survey/dig before doing it to uncover goodies if.Then explore with them your surroundings fast bc tey have 2 supply bays they move twice as fast as a scout. With this move you quickly find your neighbours and start trade treaties with them ASAP+ask 10% money help. If there is an aggresive neighbour like kamzaks or harkans,they usually are aggresive,best you can do is offer them 5% tribute+eventually trade if you're lucky+dont expand into systems where they are present,no matter how attractive is a planet,that would trigger a war in the next 20 turns or so,100% from like 4 nations at once.

From very start put 50% research electronics, rush translator then after lvl1 ,put 50% biotech and rush xenobiology to lvl 5-6 that makes diplomacy and overall relationships much much better with everyone.From others I usually only research hit chance for weapons/hit miss for enemy/ only lasers as weapons ,shield when available , and those from construction that offers industry+food bonuses. Later on rush terraform and use "clean" on toxic planets to turn them into barren .

Usually on hige/large/medium planets that can house more than 5b ppl or so,focus on industry+trade+farming and 1-2 lvl of research bc those are your industry tycoons later on (if they have tourist/science bonuses then go for that).All small planets I go for tourism+trade+research and 1-2lvls of industry+food which I delete later on when I can buyout the next lvl of tourism/science.
The most imba starbase I designed by now was with shield+autorepairbots+full fighter slots and 9 heavy lasers front, Regular on all other slots.It's just imba ,swept Harkan transpoorter and cruizer swarms like it was nothing.
If you can build that starbase on your major tycoon planets ,you dont even need a fleet unless you want to conquer something.That's wat I do,if war, I quicky buyout couple large ships and when peace ,then scrap every ship.

The ship maintenance is only getting worse as game progresses .I guess the game designers really like this randomness between realism and abstract concepts on this game. I have seen motherships reach about 10b maintenace in my last long game but it's fine bc with about 30-40 planets efficiently developed u can have as much as 20 motherships and still have 20-30+ b income. Always beg every race ,except those at war , for that 10% money help, 90% chance they will offer it if u have high xenobiology level (that;'s my experimentation with it,so far). Everytime they ask a tech of you, ask them money, you might get deals like 50b for a tech, I did lol.

[Kasseopea]

Struggled with humans at the beginning and the just created my own master race XD

Human Template, Name: Aurora (pl. Aurorians)
Special Abilities: Repulsive, Quasi-Immortal, Warrior, Resourceful
Homeworld: Huge, Arctic, Abundant resources,
Government: Unification
Aptitudes: Avg. Farming, Good in everything else
Technologies: No additional, Replaced Laser with Ion (i guess it will be great for boarding)

I had almost 50.000 research, 7.4 bc income and needed no food at the start.

[SF-Mike]

I would love to see a starter guide. For one I'm almost at my wits end with this game for how much "cheating" (for lack of a better term) the AI races seem to do... or at the very least the AI knows the secrets to managing the financial side of an empire which I don't.

Game one, tutorial game, ok seems straight forward tells me what to do I do it. I realize on "mission" mode other races have a jump start but geeze survival chances were next to zero. Quickly wiped out by some other race can't recall which one, the one with the parasites on it's back I think. I had zero chance, he had better ships than me, bigger ships than me, more ships than me, and there was a zero chance for survival. I guess the "tutorial" part was simply the initial find the ship, board the ship, get the first tech and colonize Mars.

Fine next game, classic mode, everyone on equal footing at the beginning. Similar results, I get flooded with I dunno cruisers or the next size smaller ships from someone who got really upset with me for whatever reason and they annihilated me in short order. I couldn't have a large fleet the economy wasn't there. But somehow the AI knew how to work the system (or the AI does not have to pay attention to maintenance costs). Oh yeah this was on VERY EASY too. This is the part that really bugged me most, because very easy should be a cakewalk from a 4X game, this is the "tutorial" level where you can pretty much walk over anyone once you figure stuff out and at the very least hold anyone else off while you figured things out.

Next game, forget humans, lets use those blob things which doesn't have any disadvantages with planets/pollution. Similar result. Still very easy level.

Ok gloves off, custom race, go for that near immortal trait people are talking about, can also get points from dumping farming to poor since who cares I don't need food. And shazam starting with 7b a turn, not sure how lack of food translates to that much money but whatever it worked. I also started paying attention to cost of ships and what not, and saw that a cruiser cost me 1.6b where as the scout class ships that were out in the galaxy cost 40m each, some quick math figured 40 scouts were probably better than 1 cruiser. Built scouts and now they cost 80m each, then I realize the level of my tech (specifically armor) is tied directly to the maintenance cost of ships, not in a tiny way either, 80mc one turn, went to level 4 titanium armor now 120mc per scout. Seems very VERY broken. Then it got me thinking how the hell could the AI races have such large technologically superior fleets, what do they know about budget that I don't.

So I decided that I'm going to take a hiatus from this game for maybe a month until more people get it and perhaps figure out the Rosetta stone of finance for the game, reading through old threads I see many people saying the difficulty needs to be increased. I'm not sure if there was a big increase between beta and release but if not it's making me feel really stupid. I don't like the idea that there's *A* way to succeed in the game, and I don't like it that creating a custom super race allows me to survive a bit longer too, so I'll just wait out until some tutorials/help/maybe even some tables of maintenance/profit pop up on the various buildings. (maybe even a patch or two). If I could mod the game files to make ship maintenance a fixed cost that never increases I probably could do better with a ton of scout ships.

[Uberlord]

Sure I have been thinking about this for a while now and wanted to wait for a stable version that didnt make huge changes to the game so the guild will be valid for longer then a month. By the end of Feb I will probably have one posted here and I plan on doing a lets play as well.

Excellent FrozenFallout. I/we look forward to it. Hopefully you'll convince the programming gods to provide an ingame Notepad to enable us newbies to archive & access your tidbits of knowledge to be copied for our own ingame use.

[celludriel]

Well I finally managed to win one planet over, but I actually had to bombard it. No matter how much I tried I couldn't get that missile defense down. I had about 3 motherships, 8 cruisers , a few meds and about 10 scouts. Invading wasn't an option at any time. That I found quite annoying actually.

[Seddrik]

Regarding difficulty... customize your race. Trade in all the techs you need to (try to keep industry ones if you can) and up all your options - unification govt, largest planet size, max all racial attributes for farming, industry, etc. Then spam colonies from the start. I've never had a single problem with food or money and can build starbases on every planet and big ships... I had more money than I could spend (hundreds of trillions by turns 60-100).
Needs to be harder.

[SF-Mike]

Regarding difficulty... customize your race. Trade in all the techs you need to (try to keep industry ones if you can) and up all your options - unification govt, largest planet size, max all racial attributes for farming, industry, etc. Then spam colonies from the start. I've never had a single problem with food or money and can build starbases on every planet and big ships... I had more money than I could spend (hundreds of trillions by turns 60-100).
Needs to be harder.

You don't see something inherently broken with that direction of play though? I mean I get it that you can make a "super race" fairly easily and it makes the game significantly easier, however my problem is why are are the stock races so bloody difficult to play with. Especially when the game difficulty is set to VERY EASY, and I'm not talking about struggling to get going, I'm talking multiple cruisers/destroyer class vessels swarming the every living poop out of you at a point when 1) everyone starts equally (classic game) and 2) there's no way you could possible support that many ships so how the hell can he support that kind of fleet? Is he really in that much debt?

The economy of the game is either broken, or works in a way I have yet to figure out.

[Xiphix]

[quote="bidusv1"]Ha that was exactly what I experienced in my first 5 games and complained here about it too ,the harkans and their tech and imba transporter fleets.I don't know your whole setup, I only played games on 9planets per system and large galaxy.While the AI seems so imbalanced and strong like first 150 turns, after that he fails to colonize new planets.I have seen harkans on many systems with 6-9 planets, only using 1-2 for very long time.....

But I learned a couple of very nice tricks and now the game seems much more balanced and nice.
First thing you do when you start, design a colony ship.Delete all weapons and equip it with colonny pods and 2 supply bays, buyout the first 2 ,colonize if possible 2 new systems,not Mars,always survey/dig before doing it to uncover goodies if.Then explore with them your surroundings fast bc tey have 2 supply bays they move twice as fast as a scout. /quote]


Im curious, youre saying that supply bays will make my ships move faster?

I admit I have no idea what this special does, its description is not helpful at all.

[lulong420]

Don't let the hard factor discourage you, if you're playing as a human. You start off with a terrible system, and a lot of useless tech. The only way I've beaten it with human default is by playing nice with everyone I can and eventually it pays off in one form or another.

As previously mentioned, custom colonizer right off the bat is a must, don't float around in someones territory or they'll start to get hostile with you(unless you have the treaty with them to do so), check your designs every once in awhile to make sure everything is optimal, ships are upgraded every once in awhile and allow you to add more things. If you befriend someone, don't be afraid to ask for technology because most of the time you will get what you want cause your such a nice human. Also, don't forget theres an auto-save feature at the end of every turn, so if you do something stupid you can always reload and try again.

Now if you're going to play a custom race and squash anyone that you dislike, here is my optimal build so far that can take on the hardest of difficulty:
Race: Anything but human (humans starting system sucks)
Specials: Creative, Resourceful, Immaterial, Repulsive
Starting Planet: Huge, Terran
Government: Representative
Population Growth: High
(Farming: poor Industry: good Trade: good Research: good Boarding Combat: poor Ground Combat: good Morale: good Finance: good Ship attack: good Ship Defense: good)
Research: Genetic Manipulation Rank 1 Terraforming Rank 1

With this build you can forget about farms, which frees up more building space, I personally go trade/entertainment/research on normal planets (building space 9 or less) so it's 100% scientists (using buyout since you have no industry). Then on the ore based or rich planets I'll not even build research and focus on industry/trade/entertainment. Mid-Game you'll be rolling in the credits and have lots of options for your fleet, plus you'll have finally caught up to the other races in tech, and maybe even surpassed them.
Also, don't forget to actually terraform the planet(it's an option in the pollution toggle where you clean, neglect, maintain, terraform), I've forgotten about it sometimes till late game when I notice the planet only has like 50K population.

Can't really think of anything else

[alanschu]

Might be some luck involved, as my first playthrough had a sweet system nearby that had 3 terran planets on it (two of them did have gem deposits too), but I found focusing economy early really helped and it didn't take very long for me to make multiple bc/yr (my income right now is net 432.3 bc to the point where I was like "man this game is pretty easy" because I can just buy everything).

I'm very curious how my second game will go based on the findings of a lot of people here :S