Gameplay tips & tricks

Fyron · #1 October 17th, 2004, 03:12 PM

18) You can upgrade a single facility at a time on a planet that has lots of the same facility. Find a planet with just one obselete facility built. Add the Upgrade Facility X item to the build queue. Click on Fill Queue, then Save the queue with an appropriate name by clicking on Add Type. Now, go to the previous planet. Use the Fill Queue button to add the single facility upgrade order. You can naturally have "Upgrade 2 X" or "Upgrade 3 X" fill queues by finding planets with 2 or 3 facilities to upgrade, respectively. Using this method, you can upgrade large Groups of facilities in small batches, thus allowing some to be upgraded immediately and begin functioning sooner than it would take for all to be upgraded at once.

19) You can use the hotkey ctrl + t to manually add a minefield marker to a sector, and ctrl + r to remove one. These can be used to mark certain sectors, such as damaging warp points, as no-fly zones. Your ships will avoid the sectors marked as minefields, trying to find a safer route.

20) Your exploration ships do not have to stop when entering an unexplored system. You can order them to "move to" a random sector in the system, such as the far side or center, after the "warp" order. The ship will merrily continue on it's way.

Slick · #2 October 17th, 2004, 03:40 PM

21) To give a bunch of ships in the same sector the "sentry" order, shift-click them all, then manually left click one of them and give it the "sentry" order. For some reason, the Sentry button doesn't light up when shift clicking multiple ships.

13') you can use this "stagger step" to time out lots of combinations. Stellar manipulation is a great one to practice with, but you can use your imagination to time out other complicated routines in a simultaneous game turn.

19') Strategically placing minefield markers can also be used to "funnel" ships to move over a Resupply Depot.

Slick.

p.s. Fyron, for 18, I had thought many times about doing this, but I didn't think it would work. Thanks!

Atrocities · #3 October 17th, 2004, 08:01 PM

I made this a sticky for a bit. To give it a chance to draw in readers. Will unsticky it later.

Roanon · #4 October 17th, 2004, 08:02 PM

Hey Slick, you're giving away all my cool tricks! Soon I will not be able to win any game any more!

2) I do not have verified it yet, but I think I have noticed after the Last patch that ships in queues on a planet without shipyards are automatically cleared when the turn is executed.

6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

10) Too much income, too little spaceyards? Retrofit series are your friend! Roughly doubles your shipyard capacity. Save cost and time by training while retrofitting.

15) Always build at least one resource converter more than needed. Nothing more crippling than a conquered resource converter if it is your only one. One class III converter can only convert a maximum of 1,365,000 resources into 955,500 of a different type per turn. If you try to convert more, the orders will be queued into the next turn.

Fyron · #5 October 17th, 2004, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Roanon said:
6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

Huh. I have never had a problem doing this. The only time a problem arises is if I have a ship survive with so much damage that it can't move much if at all, but that just stops the fleet entirely...

Tanus · #6 October 17th, 2004, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:

Quote:

Roanon said:
6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

Huh. I have never had a problem doing this. The only time a problem arises is if I have a ship survive with so much damage that it can't move much if at all, but that just stops the fleet entirely...

I've also had this problem. If I tell ships to attack, then load troops, very often the ships will just move on without reloading the troops, and thereby glass the next planets. I also attack-move one sector-load troops from previous to make sure that it actually loads my troops

Fyron · #7 October 18th, 2004, 12:24 AM

Does this happen in sectors with multiple planets? I find that if I order the fleet to attack every planet in the sector, then one load troops order, it works fine. I don't think I have ever had a problem with my fleets not picking up the troops on the move. Is the ground combat requiring more than one combat? This isn't very likely in stock SE4, but could be an issue...

Roanon · #8 October 18th, 2004, 02:24 AM

I usually attack multiple planets first, because after the load order it might be that only 1 transport may be loaded with troops, and the fleet be able to capture only single planets. About 90% of the time, the load order didn't work unless preceeded by a sidestep move of one sector which I routinely do now.

Slick · #9 October 18th, 2004, 02:25 AM

As you all can tell, I finally got a weekend off! Worked 7 weeks straight and the 2nd thing I did on my day off was play SE4

Anyways, all the good ideas here will eventually make it to the FAQ.

There has to be more good ideas out there. What I would really like to see are neat or subtle interface tricks, special strings of ship orders, and the like. Unique planet or system setups that you find useful are also welcome. Any good multiplayer tricks are also good (keep the good ones secret if you want, but throw us a bone!) If you have had a headache with a certain part of the game and later found a workaround, post it here. Chances are good that others haven't found the trick yet.

Slick.