Newbie Strategy Guide

[PeteB]

Ok, what I was looking for when I first hit this forum was a newbie strategy guide. Not the "How do Idesign killer dreadnoughts" type stuff but more of a "where do I begin" once the tutorial lets off. Now I have a little knowledge (A dangerous thing) and I'm starting the thread myself, so there!

I fully expect to have some of my uneducated comments overturned by more experiencd players, and I hope that you all will add to the list of Things to Remember.

-Facilities:
1. Resource facilities should be built in about the following ratios (depending on race); 10 : 1 : 2. Concentrate your resource harvesters on planets wiht high percentages for that resource. Later (with robotoid factories and such) it becomes important to have concentrated resource processing.

2. Resource Storage facilities should be built after the initial game start, once you've "topped off" your resources. These should be built to about 1/10th or more the number of actual harvesting facilities, but on low-resource planets. These facilities will come in handy when you switch several shipyards to "emergency build" to counter a threat. Resources disappear very quickly with 7-8 (or 20-25) fast building shipyards. They will be restocked, however, when those SY slow down.

3. Ignore the remote miner components. Ships with them are costing more in maintenance than they mine, satellites, while they have no maintenance, still need to be transported to the asteroids or uninhabited planets, and that is time consuming and nets little (you need to pay maint. of the trransport ship!). Save your mouseclicks.

-Colonies

1. Colonize compatible atmospheres as much as possible. When you hit a barrier though (such as several empty systems or systems with a black hole, other civ, etc), use that period to colonize non-compatible worlds. Do not even look at the resource percentages before colonizing.

2. Place colonies where there is a good resupply spot, especially when a planet lies squarely on the path between two important warp points, even if the atmosphere is incompatible. This will save time and effort down the road when moving ships around, so that they stay supplied.

3. Look for "ancient ruins" and other specials that give technology. This may seem obvious, but it is worth going a long way to colonize such a world.

4. Later, after you have captured other races, you will replace the incompatible races with compatible races on those planets colonized with the incorrect breathers. Do not sweat colonizing these places, but don't bother until you have the capacity.

5. Colony ships are tactical! send a few colony ships along with (well, just behind) your exploration ships and advancing fleets. You will need a forward resupply base desperately before you know it.

6. Do look at resource percentages after colonizing and use as your basis for what will be built. For low resource planets, research facilities in large numbers will eventually be needed. I found intelligence facilities to be needed only later in the game.

7. All large planets must have shipyards! This is key to your ability to respond to attacks with overpowering force. Where there are shipyards, build a resupply base also. Small planets are less likely to need a shipyard, but be sure they are built in numbers just behind the point of expansion.

8. I have yet to see my own defense satellites and weapon platforms on planets put to good use. In the event of a stray light cruiser or two, fighters are better than defense platforms or satellites.

9. Move those people around! You have a homeworld witht he population maxed out to begin with. You cannot profit from growth on that planet unless you move the people off to other worlds. Colony ships start the process, but build a small transport or four to move the people from home to outer worlds. This will also make it easier to build colony ships on outer worllds and take the pop from them.

-Exploration

1. Build your largest available ship (up to Battlecruiser) with full engines and lots of supply components, and maybe a weapon or two, and the best sensor available. These are your scouts and explorers. Send them as far as fast as possible. Follow with colony ships.

2. Make peace with aliens as soon as possible. If you make a treaty, though (aside from non-intercourse), realize that their colony ships might just start colonizing your systems around the edges.

-Ships, Satellites, etc.

1. Build ships to the latest tech (of course). I found that missles are the most useful and powerful early in the game (and even later, after introduction of Point Defense, to a lesser extent). Phased-Polaron beams become the beam weapon of choice until technology catches up with them. Mix these two types of weapons.

2. Ships can be upgraded, but are useless when being repaired, so upgrade in batches over many turns, and be prepared to have some ships out of action for a time. Delay upgrades until significant tech improvements are made, but beware! too expensive an upgrade is not possible.

3. I found old, obsolete escorts and frigates to be perfect candidates for "sensor escort" upgrade: the latest scanner technology, and point defense. They are plentiful (many built at the beginning of the game!) and Last to be targeted by the AI (which shoots the most powerful first). This saves space in capital ships (they can cut some PD and sensor spaces) and makes use of otherwise scrappable ships. Just make sure you always include one-two in each battle fleet.

4. Build troop ships! You will need them to capture enemy worlds intact (although I hear they surrender a lot, sometimes that takes time). Build the ship in a system with lots of colonies, and build the troops at the other colonies, then you run around picking up the troops. Similar building strategy for carriers and fighters.

5. Colony ships should have some cargo components. Put as many as possible (not much) and up your new colony's size and productivity.

-Warp Points

1. Defend your side of important warp points! This is the place for satellites, fighters, and starbases (built by yard ships). Enemy craft appear in the middle of the area, intermixed with the defenders, so there are usually no long-range missle volleys, but short, brutal close range fights. Pack satellites or bases with the biggest beam weapon you have and lie in wait. This is better than defending world by world.

2. Put a scout on the far side of a warp point. If you can see the force coming you can bring your own forces to bear that much earlier.

All right, there's my suggestions. Any experts out there want to add!?!

[Jason2]

I have found it imperative to load my ships' cargo-holds with lime jello. It is a must-have in battle. It provides: food, lubricant (especially when hit and a crew member is trapped beneath an I-beam), and helps morale.

Um.... other than the lime jello, I have nothing to add.

Jason2

[SunDevil]

I posted a topic called FAQ: The first 50 turns. You might want to do a search of the board and try to find it. All your questions have been answered tons of times before, I would just search the board. You also might want to make that strategy guide yourself, I'm sure people would be appreciative.

[Commander G]

quote:

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Originally posted by PeteB:

...
-Colonies

7. All large planets must have shipyards! This is key to your ability to respond to attacks with overpowering force. Where there are shipyards, build a resupply base also. Small planets are less likely to need a shipyard, but be sure they are built in numbers just behind the point of expansion.

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7B. Consider using Emergency Build to build several Starbase Shipyards. This allows you to maintain several queues at the same point in space so you can gather up a fleet faster. While orbital shipyards produce much slower and do not get population or happiness modifiers, the fact that you can have several queues at one point is very useful. I will typically use emergency builds to build 5 of these over my home world. Then when my homeworld is on Slow for 10 turns, I scrap its shipyard for the minerals and build something like a Mineral Faciltiy. Your homeworlds percentages are to valuable to waste a Facility on having a shipyard. Do not keep shipyards on planets that you want to maximize resource production.

Also, if you are worried about the maintainance cost of these orbital shipyards, remember you can mothball them when you don't need them. However, the queue is in statis while mothballed as of 1.19 so you cannot use up the slow turns while mothballed.

quote:

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Originally posted by PeteB:



8. I have yet to see my own defense satellites and weapon platforms on planets put to good use. In the event of a stray light cruiser or two, fighters are better than defense platforms or satellites.

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8B Satellites and Weapon Platforms are extremely valuable in a Strategic Movement/PBEM game with aggressive human players. A defenseless planet can be wiped out by one Uranium Cannon Escort. Units do not have maintainence costs (at lest currently, many are lobbying for them to change this). Weapon Platforms are extremely tuff because they have a special Large Mount at 200kt that ships do not benefit from. Also weapon platforms cannot be specifically targeted, I think there is a change that any planetary hit goes on the platform instead of population.

Satelittes are only good with Strategic combat because they clump together on one side of a planet. However, they can shoot missles and do not require supplies. Missle ships (common in the early game) cannot target Satelittes, so they will need Direct fire or point defenese against these).

quote:

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Originally posted by PeteB:


-Exploration

2. Make peace with aliens as soon as possible. If you make a treaty, though (aside from non-intercourse), realize that their colony ships might just start colonizing your systems around the edges.

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Note: treaties are costly for Nuetral and Bloodthirsty races. However, Nuetral recovers happiness 250% faster.

quote:

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Originally posted by PeteB:



-Ships, Satellites, etc.

1. Build ships to the latest tech (of course). I found that missles are the most useful and powerful early in the game (and even later, after introduction of Point Defense, to a lesser extent). Phased-Polaron beams become the beam weapon of choice until technology catches up with them. Mix these two types of weapons.

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Be careful to examine cost effectiveness. Some weapons go up faster in cost than they do in proportion for damage. Range does matter much if your advantage (range differential) does not exceed the enemies combat movement rate. A typical beam ship moves three per round, so a range advantage of 3 or less does not buy you much!

quote:

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Originally posted by PeteB:


4. Build troop ships! You will need them to capture enemy worlds intact (although I hear they surrender a lot, sometimes that takes time). Build the ship in a system with lots of colonies, and build the troops at the other colonies, then you run around picking up the troops. Similar building strategy for carriers and fighters.

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4B Consider ship capturing (population transports) as an alternative to invading planets. Sometimes -20 or -50 on ground combat gives you the points you need for something more important. Troops take a bit of research.

quote:

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Originally posted by PeteB:


5. Colony ships should have some cargo components. Put as many as possible (not much) and up your new colony's size and productivity.

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5B Colonly ships should move as fast as possible. Getting there one turn earlier has a big benefit in resources down the line. Max out the engines and use whats left for more cargo (1 spot, I think). Remember, you will use up this ship.

[Emperor Zodd]

My crews prefer Hooter girls and beer over lime Jello in my cargo holds.

It works great to prevent crew insurrection!!!!

[taterbill]

"3. Ignore the remote miner components. Ships with them are costing more in maintenance than they mine, satellites, while they have no maintenance, still need to be transported to the asteroids or uninhabited planets, and that is time consuming and nets little (you need to pay maint. of the trransport ship!). Save your mouseclicks."

I totally disagree. Yes, if you put one little remote mine (minerals) component on a frigate and send it to an asteroid, you probably will spend more in maintenance than you can mine. But if you are short of organics or radioactives, remote mining, even at the lower levels, can be a life saver.

But once you have discovered larger ship hulls, put three or more remote mine components on a ship and send it to a location with 100%+ minerals, and you will more than recoup maintenance.

And choose your spots. The best place to remote mine is at a planet with multiple moons, all of which are strong in the desired resource. The percentages are summed for remote mining. Remote mine a planet with two moons, all of which are 100%+ in some resource, and you will be wallowing in resources.

Bill

[taterbill]

"8. I have yet to see my own defense satellites and weapon platforms on planets put to good use. In the event of a stray light cruiser or two, fighters are better than defense platforms or satellites."

In general, I agree with this. The one problem with this is that the computer often builds missle cruisers that can't fire at your fighters. In theory, that is good, but that means the only target they can engage is your planet. If even one slips past your fighters, your planet can be wiped out. Your fighters are left in orbit guarding a dead planet.

To prevent this, I design a small WP that has nothing but point defense weapons and some armor or shields. You can build three in one turn on emergency build, or three in two turns by turning on e-build, selecting one turn's worth, then turning e-build back off.

The only place I tend to use satellites is to guard my end of a waypoint. I use many different satellite designs, as that ensures that they don't all get clumped together. I deploy them in a waypoint sector, and incoming ships exit the waypoint surrounded by my satellites. Especially deadly if some mines are sprinkled in as well. Have fun.

[taterbill]

"1. Build your largest available ship (up to Battlecruiser) with full engines and lots of supply components, and maybe a weapon or two, and the best sensor available. These are your scouts and explorers. Send them as far as fast as possible. Follow with colony ships."

Once solar panels are available, use them and forget the supply components. Then your scouts can keep going forever. (Or at least until they meet some race that blows them up. Or they get damaged in an unstable worm hole and fall into a black hole. Or whatever.)

[Taqwus]

More on scouts:

Scouts definitely could use solar collectors to greatly extend their range, and thus utility; in addition, solar sails will be helpful in making them go faster and faster. Both of these two useful techs are found in the Stellar Harnessing tech area, which is available upon researching Astrophysics I.

Other components worthy of being on a scout include a long-range scanner and a non-combat sensor, and cloaking.

By non-combat sensor, I mean *not* the Combat Sensor that's available via Sensors I-III. Instead, there are five types of sensing:

Active ECM. Most objects have Level 1 Active ECM by default. Tachyon Sensors, found rather expensively via the Sensors tech area, provide three more levels.

Passive ECM. Again, Level 1 by default for most objects. Hyper-Optics give this, and are found in the Advanced Military Science tech area.

Gravitic. This is not present by default, and is granted only by Gravitic Sensors in the Gravitic Technology tech area.

Temporal. Temporal sensors are restricted to Temporal Technology, and therefore to that particular racial trait.

Psychic: Psychic sensors are just as restricted as Temporal, only to the Psychic racial trait.

A scout ship with a Level 3 sensor device of any type will generally be able to detect everything in a system. Against a human opponent in a huge galaxy, if all players tend to delay and build up for a while before war it is very possible that large war fleets could be skulking about cloaked...

And one application of having numerous scouts is that of an intelligence spotter. Namely, anti-ship and anti-colony intelligence operations can be directed at specific targets *if* you can see them. For instance, if you station a spotter in a 'no man's land' system -- perhaps one with only an asteroid belt, say, so nobody has a colony base for resupply -- you can use Crew Insurrection to snare passing ships. Not only is this a fast way of gaining new technology, since these ships can be returned to a shipyard and analyzed, but it can cripple a small attack fleet by turning its best ships against their brethren.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[taterbill]

A question regarding scouts and damage:

I just had a thought while I'm here at work pretending to be working. Those dang unstable wormholes can sure put a crimp in any scouting expedition. If you say, built a cruiser-level scout with its own repair bay, would it be able to repair itself? (Assuming the repair bay did not get damaged, of course.)

Bottom line question: Can ships with repair bays repair themselves?

Bill