Gameplay tips & tricks

[Gandalph]

Atrocities said:
I finally have one to add. I hope it has not already been added.

Tip: You can sort the planets by min, org, or rad values simply by clicking on the word "Values" above each in the Planets Window. The window you use to send colony ships.

This is a very useful tip if your running low on minerals, you can sort prospective planet by mineral value and then deploy your colony ship to that planet. The same goes for Orgs and rads.

To further this tip, if you click on the planets column it orders the planets from smallest to largest, then click on the mins, orgs, rads colomn and you will have the planets sorted by value AND size. This way you can scroll down to the Huge planets with high resources.

[Atrocities]

11. When encountering a new race, first destroy his ship, then offer him a treaty. This is called Gun Boat diplomacy.

From the Evil Ruler Hand Book and E.R.A.S.E.

[Spoo]

Here's one I learned from Spoon: (this applies to the stock game)

There's no need to use colonizer hulls. Instead use small transports, since they're the same size, have the same cost, and it's not immediately clear to your enemies whether the ship is a colonizer, minelayer, troop transport, etc.

[LGM]

Spoo said:
There's no need to use colonizer hulls. Instead use small transports, since they're the same size, have the same cost, and it's not immediately clear to your enemies whether the ship is a colonizer, minelayer, troop transport, etc.

To build upon this technique also use Freighters as your early combat ships. The Satellite launchers have a high probability of absorbing missile hits.

Consider building warships on Freighter hulls the first turn or two. You should with good constructon be able to build such ships in one turn at a homeworld. Then you can switch to Emergency building SY Bases and/or Freighter with Colonly modules.

On your initial Freighter warships, stick a few population on them. This population will be immediately replaced, but this population can be used to exchange breathers with another race as you explore.

[LGM]

Carriers that fight in combat should be classfied as Offensive Ships or Troop Carriers so they will not get the Don't Get Hurt order by default from the Carrier class. This avoids the pitfall of forgetting to change their orders, especially when you upgrade designs.

[LGM]

While someone mentioned that Small Fighter stacks are less vulnerable, they can get in the way of your warships and block them from getting into battle. Large stacks keep your movement lanes open.

[TurinTurambar]

LGM said:

To build upon this technique also use Freighters as your early combat ships. The Satellite launchers have a high probability of absorbing missile hits.

Consider building warships on Freighter hulls the first turn or two. You should with good constructon be able to build such ships in one turn at a homeworld. Then you can switch to Emergency building SY Bases and/or Freighter with Colonly modules.

On your initial Freighter warships, stick a few population on them. This population will be immediately replaced, but this population can be used to exchange breathers with another race as you explore.

Why would you use a Transport Hull as a warship when " · At least 50% of spaces must be used for Cargo Containers."

?
Turin

[geoschmo]

TurinTurambar said:
Why would you use a Transport Hull as a warship when " · At least 50% of spaces must be used for Cargo Containers."

?
Turin

A cargo ship is 300Kt, half of which must be cargo spaces. So basically you have a the same amount of room as an escort (150kt) for weapons etc PLUS you have 150Kt worth of cargo components that help to absorb a few extra shots in combat. All else being equal such an armed cargo ship should win a large majority of 1 on 1 fights against escorts, and will hold it's own against frigates. The longer you can Last in a fight the better off you'll be. The main drawback is the 5 engine limit on cargo ships. Sometimes speed can be a decisive factor.

[Alneyan]

A few more "oops, what did go wrong?":
- When using Carriers, never, ever, forget to check their ship strategies. They usually default to "Don't get hurt", even if they happen to carry enough firepower to slaughter a whole civilisation.

This is fairly awful for carriers used as gunboats, and a disaster if you intend your carriers to keep up with the rest of your fleet (while launching some fighters). As such, it would be best to keep a close eye on their ship strategies, before running into such problems.

- Along the same lines: I believe a retrofitted ship keeps the ship strategy of the first design. At any rate, I would advise you to set a similar ship strategy for the basic and newer designs, just in case.

Likewise, copying designs do not copy the ship strategy, so you will have to set it again for any copied design. Otherwise, you will find yourself with ships running away from combat, which isn't perhaps the purpose of your warships.


And one more actual tip: do not overlook Emergency building, since it can be quite useful to speed up your growth. Emergency building results in an increase by 50% of your construction rates, at the cost of one turn of Slow build (at 25% of the standard construction rate) per turn of Emergency building.

Contrary to what might be believed, Emergency building can Last for eleven turns, for only ten turns of slow build. Construction is checked eleven times between the turn when you switch Emergency build on (0.0 year of Emergency build) and the tenth turn (1.0 year of Emergency build), when it will be switched off. Nonetheless, this Last turn still has the increased construction rates.

Besides emergencies, Emergency build can be used for the following purposes:
- To fully develop a planet with few facility slots. For example, if you want to build one Spaceport and four research centers, switching Emergency build on will allow you to build the Spaceport in two turns rather than three, at virtually no cost; the nine remaining turns will be more than enough to build your four research centers. The same could be used for Atmosphere Converters (done in five turns with Emergency Building, leaving you six turns to fill up the five remaining slots at best) among other facilities.

- To speed up the construction of expensive ships, aka Stellar Manipulation vessels. When the ETA before completion shows 1.6 year, Emergency building can bring the delay down to 1.1 year, which will be completed before Emergency building wears off. A net gain of five turns might be just all you need to close that wormhole before the invading fleet warps in, rather than crashing on said fleet.

By the same reasoning, spaceyards only expected to build a single item can use Emergency building to gain five turns of construction time. For example, a spaceyard base intended to build one remote-mining starbase would use Emergency build to get the starbase completed five turns before, resulting in a very significant gain by allowing the remote-mining operation to start five turns before.

- A common early game opening is to build eleven colony ships at your homeworld, in order to expand as quickly as can be done. By the time the homeworld goes back to very low construction rates, you should have at least one or two spaceyards somewhere else to carry on with the production, while your other colony ships do their best to give you a lead in expansion. You might need retrofits to manage this however, especially with average construction rates and/or a Medium-sized homeworld or below, which gives me the perfect opportunity to speak of retrofitting.

* Retrofitting allows you to "transform" a ship of a certain design into another, at a higher price. The targetted design can only be 50% (or less) more expensive than the original design, all resources added. For instance, a basic ship costing 15,000 minerals could be retrofitted to a design costing 10,000 minerals, 2,000 organics and 10,000 radioactives (total 22,000 resources, while the limit was 22,500 resources).

The added cost of retrofitting is +20% per component added (so adding a component normally costing 400 minerals will cost 480 minerals), and 30% of the cost of any removed component. You will also have to pay maintenance for your ships being retrofitted, although the total maintenance should be lower than for the full design.

Any added component will be "broken" when added, though having broken components does not affect retrofitting in any way. Lastly, retrofitting does not allow you to add spaceyards or colony modules to a ship not having any such component to begin with. If your ship had an Ice module, you would however be able to retrofit it in a Gas coloniser.

* Once again, retrofitting has several uses:
- It helps speed up the construction of these expensive ships, namely Stellar Manipulation vessels. Building one of the cheaper Stellar Manipulation components (the Matter Gravity Sphere, or the Ionic components if possible) to retrofit them into Warp Openers or Planet Creators is a very effective way of getting these ships more quickly, especially in conjunction with Emergency building.

Be warned that the actual retrofit is very expensive, generally around 80,000 minerals and 60,000 radioactives to retrofit a Planet Creator into a Warp Opener. Because of this, you should have a few storage facilities and a balanced economy before attempting any massive Stellar Manipulation project.

- Retrofitting is also used to virtually increase your number of spaceyards. In other words, you would create a cheaper design, built one turn earlier than the full ship, and would "finish" the ship through a single retrofit in orbit. This does not usually result in ships being completed earlier, but increases your construction abilities. For example, if the original ship required four turns to build, but the retrofitted Version needs three turns, you can build 33% more ships than before.

This will require you to have at least decent repair abilities, and some resources to spare since it is somewhat more expensive than the regular way. It remains quite useful as a temporary adjustement of your construction abilities however; if you have too many resources, you can thus boost your construction rates, while waiting for more spaceyards to come Online. And when/if you lack resources, simply go back to the original design not requiring any retrofit.

- The Last main use of retrofits is for retroseries, where a given ship is retrofitted several times before being "finished". This way is the most expensive in resources (although by the time it is widespread, you should not have too many problems with economics), and requires some micromanagement as well. It will significantly improve your construction rates however, as such ships can often be completed in half the time originally needed.

My apologises if any of the above is unclear or vague; I find retrofitting and Emergency building to be fairly complicated processes to explain, although they are important in a game. If you are left puzzled and with a headache after reading the above, please say so and I will do my best to give a more thorough explanation (or leave this task to someone actually able to get herself understood).

[Atrocities]

That is a lot of excellent info there.