.com.unity Forums - Updating Player Guide and Walk Thru

Some random comments:

- About early expansion: the problem with using base space yards in the first turns is that it will slow down your expansion a lot, which can be a death warrant under certain circumstances. Your first colony ship will only come out of the space yards on turn 5 (from the first base space yard), unless you have 150 construction aptitude and Propulsion II (or perhaps III). Then you will probably need to colonise a planet with a lot of minerals, as you are spending a lot more resources than with a "regular" 11 colony ships at the homeworld. So you will have to wait for turn 6 (perhaps later depending on the game) before being able to send colony ships to establish outPosts far away from your homesystem.

On the other hand, the 11 colony ships way allows you to have your first colony ship on turn 2, which should go as far away from home as you dare. Then it will build a space yard on a small moon, enabling you to produce other colony ships farther away from home. It is especially important if you are close to an Empire with an aggressive expansion (sending its colony ships near your systems), as otherwise you may find yourself boxed in a smaller part of the galaxy.

While there are other ways than the "11 colony ships on the homeworld" method, I would certainly not advise a new player to use them since it makes the early game more risky. Expansion is risky by nature, so making it more dangerous is probably not the best for someone playing her first game (being involved in an early war while you are busy colonising usually means a disaster).

- About the current guide: You should add something about the true effects of ER Atrocities, as the ingame description is fairly confusing. Decreasing ER by five points is equivalent to decreasing both Happiness and Reproduction by one point, which isn't really what is advertised by the game.

- About racials: besides what has been said below:
* Religious: gives you some nice shrines (+15% production, +15% offence, an UPC-like shrine) and the Nature Shrine (mentioned by Kamog). They can be helpful to give you a small advantage early on. The Religious trait is also the cheapest to take, as you can safely reduce your aggressiveness a bit (15 or 20 points if you want to play it safe), and the Time Shrine improves your resource production (which could equal a "free" bonus in resource characteristics early on).
* Organic: cheaper components, and some pretty good weapons (the Enveloping Acid Globule has a damage/kt value superior to the WMG, and costs less. It doesn't have the +30% bonus to hit of the WMG, but its rate of fire is better (2 against 3).
* Crystalline: you have a facility reducing maintenance in a system (nice if you want to go above your "reasonable" upkeep limit; you can always stop some of your space yards once the fleet leaves the system), a very nice armour (at best you need to do 150 damage in order to break the Crystalline Armour; anything else does no damage whatsoever to the ship) and the Energy Dampener. This weapon prevents the target from firing its weapons for a duration equal to the damage dealt, so firing three Energy Dampeners III (3 damage each) on a APB ship will mean that this ship will need *ten* turns before being able to fire its weapons. It cannot be countered by armour, shielding or the Master Computer, though it may not work against PDC (it doesn't work against units fortunately).
- Psychic: their training facilities are helpful to either increase training rates (they stack with sector wide training) or to train ships "on the go", as they travel through your systems. They have the best racial weapons: the Telekinetic Project V has the same damage ratio as the Meson BLaster VI, costs less and deals more damage per hit (its range is of 6 though), and the Mental Singularity Generator is your best bet if you don't expect your ship to Last more than one turn in battle. This weapon has a rate of fire of 4, deals more damage than the WMG (for an equal damage ratio) and is fairly accurate (+20% to hit if memory serves).
- Temporal: They have a versatile array of weapons, which especially shines if you are facing someone fond of shields. They also have an UPC-like facility twice as effective as the regular one, and a facility giving a +30% to offence in a given system. Note, however, that you need to scrap your regular Spaceyard before building the Temporal Space Yard.

You would probably want to cut down my babble, as the explanations are mostly here to justify why I say, for example, that the Psychic trait has decent racial weapons (which isn't that common for racial weaponry).

- Besides this: what about adding a "pitfall" list at the end of the guide? It would explain, for example, why happiness is very important (it alters your production levels and, more importantly, can mean rioting) or why you should not overlook Stellar Manipulation. These seem to be the two most common pitfalls I have seen on PBW, and they can alone spell the doom of an Empire.