Newbie tips?

I'm a newbie too - so should be able to give you a bit of advice. First, I'm going to turn off pirates for a bit, and put the enemy on Easy mode. Watch your empire menu on the left of the screen carefully, your planet will flash reddish whenever an enemy has engaged, and I think there is some sort of audio queue as well. I'm LOVING the tech trees, much because of the cool differences in fleets and techs between the races. Turn on most of the visual indicators from the user interface options too, until you figure out what you don't need.

the reason the ai may have a bigger fleet then you is because they researched their fleet logistics. This allows them more fleet capacity thus increasing the amount of ships they can have. I believe this is the 3rd button tab on the research tree. Once you are in the fleet logistics tab you want to go to the bottom research queue and that is where you can increase the fleet capacity. The top on is for your capital ships. Also it will appear dull in color until you have the required resources to purchase the upgrade. So if you move your cursor over the icon it will display the approperiate materials needed.

The Tech Tree is like this.

Military- Self explanatory. Researches stuff like weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, more ship types.

Civilian- Your economy stuff, colonization research, etc.

Fleet Logistics- You can upgrade how many capital ship you can have, and your overall 'Supply' number. Beware, the more you research Supply, the more of your overall income starts to dissappear. At the highest level, 75% of your income is not reaching you because it's sent to keep your fleet up and running.

Artifacts- Shows you what artifacts you have found. Artifacts are found by exploring your planet.

Thanks for replies everyone.

Yeah, I played a game for the last, I dunno, 2 hours on a 7 planet map. Unfortunately, I had pirates 'on'. It wasn't that big of a deal to defend against them. Within time, I had a fleet that could take them out really well.

Unfortunately, just as the 3rd pirate wave came, the enemy sent their entire fleet in on another planet of mine (my capital). So, that friggin sucked. I eventually took care of the pirates and scared the enemy, but I got tired of fending out attacks on both fronts. I'm just not skilled at that yet when my main goal is to learn what everything does and win a game so I get a feel for everything.

After awhile I was getting the hang of things... but I noticed credits really come in slow. I spent a lot of my time 'waiting' for something to happen. The big problem was that I wanted to take out the stupid pirate fleet, and I needed more ships and research to do it.

I'll keep playing. I wish the game wasn't so 'hardcore'. It's a great engine and design... just not much put in a functional tutorial. WC3's tutorial was basically the entire human campaign, and even then they had 'tutorial' missions throughout. That's a good way to do it. It just seems like the game throws everything at you all at once ;(

Make sure you are improving the tax base on your planets. And also make sure that you research the civilian techs that give more population to your various planets.

It sucks when two big fleets converge on you. There are no two ways about it. But keep at it. The first game I won against an easy AI was easy. The second was a little harder. Then I got my butt handed to me when I went up against 3 easy AIs.

But keep it up and keep pressing. Playing defensive, IMHO, will only invite further attack. Press your fleet forward and keep your opponents on their heels.

And keep posting any questions. These forums are very friendly.

Tech strategy varies by map. If you are playing a very big map you might aswell research everything, always having your research going because if you build up your empire and then decide to research, you won't have the time

I too am a newbie at this game, and I just finished my first game. Random SML map w/ no pirates, 13 planets, on Slow Speed, playing as TEC. It took me about 4 hours... the first 3 hours were literally just economic, planet, then military growth.

Re: playing defensive
I think there is a balance.
For instance, I was completely defensive for the first 3 hours, just building up military in case anyone stepped up to attack. There was no aggression on my part, BUT I was always churning out ships anytime there was a research lull.

Then when I saw the AI was branching out with more than just seeker ships, I knew it was time to push. So I just took ALL of my fleet to the chokepoint, cleared it up then just hopped from planet to planet destroying them.

One other tip I gained for myself during that game is to use the black market without shame. I was all over the credits and metal, but was always short in crystal.

If I waited on my income before I built, I would have been screwed. So the black market was used anytime I came up short.

Use Trade Ports to generate Credits. Don't forget to upgrade your Population Cap(The top left upgrade) ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU GET A NEW PLANET/ASTEROID. If you don't upgrade the pop by atleast one on recently colonized planets, then they drain your overall credit income.

Try and get Trade Ports at every planet, to make a big chain. The bigger the chain, the more credit per port.

You're missing one critical thing, new planets actual lose money when they're first colonized. Select the planet, click on the 'Planetary Upgrades' button and the first one increases planetary infrastructure. Until you upgrade that all new planets will cost you money.

If you hover your mouse over the credits (or metal/crystal) you'll see a detailed breakdown of incomes. Once you have your planets generating income you can start concentrating on things like research facilities and trade ports.

You can sell excess metal / crystals on the black market and also bribe the pirates to attack the AI. Try fiddling around with those abilities and the rest should make sense quickly enough.

Thanks everyone.

I played another game with 20 planets and I started upgrading the population limits on them (and also upgraded the research). I didn't upgraded my military much, but I built a lot of frigates and a colony capital ship. This strategy worked much better, even though all the planets were volcanic or ice. I finished the game with 150,000 credits and lots of resources

I did make trade centers too, but I don't I needed to. Still, it was a lot easier to win making 44 creds/sec

I'll play some more on easy to get a feel for the right order to build things. More questions to come I'm sure

Its a typical RTS in that attacking and expanding is the only gig. If it were less hardcore you'd see there's nothing else to do....an empty universe.

If you're waiting for something, you didn't plan well enough. A little sad, but true. There is no down time, except for mopping up, but that'll be fixed in 1.3.

The tutorials and in-game help could be better. I'm guessing we'll see more of that in the future.

Funnily, but predictably, one of the dev logs talks about how "now that the game is done, I'm going to write the manual this week". LOL. Guess nobody took the project management course in computer science! So of course it's 'hardcore'.

Hi everyone. Reading all this sure sounds familiar - lol. There is one other thing i found to make things move along. When your at a slow point in the game use the plus key to increase your update rate. It really makes it click the credits. Each push increases up 2X,4X,6X to 8X. Then when you get caught in a bounty war or multiple attacks pushing the minus key to slow back down, again each push goes down by 2X. Hope this helps.

SIN on  

ill give u a reply to im a good player and ive only played for a month and ive done like 15 100+ planet maps in less then 3 days its easy i only play adevnt...anyway once my fleet is up and rolling nothing can bring it down....i have 4 cap ships and over 100 frigates...like 55 destra cursaders!!! and it depends on what side ur using and fighting agasint if its TEC agasint Advent ur screwed basicly.....sry to say
anyway play advent for a while their ships are better and have better ablities like the on that its main is to control another frigate givin u the ability to gain any frigate of the enemy so u can have priates under your control if u wanted!!!

...Advent are not better than any other race. In fact, they're the least played. It's a pretty balanced game, really. I've seen TEC demolished Advent. I've seen every race be demolished and demolish the other races. Sure, there's player skill, but none is better than the other.

Any race is deadly in the right hands. I'm starting to move away from playing TEC so much. In fact, I've set the last two games to Random. I've ended up with Vasari both times but I think I'll stick with Random for a while.

I also started playing Hard AIs and it is definitely a different play style. I have to "pay attention" a little bit more now. Very challenging.

Keep up the good work, Ken!

experiment with the different ai settings too, there are different ai personalities you should look at:
aggressor, fortifier, economist, researcher etc, I found that the normal fortifier was good for me, because they dont attack until later on but they become tough to break, which makes for a good game, the aggressor function can be annoying as they attack early on which keeps catching me by surprise, ofc you could be hardcore and put it on random

Also research your crystal income techs, as crystal is what seems to be in shortage early on, trade ports are friggin sexy, i had over 60credits per second from my ports in one game, then whatever extra from tax, as soon as you start your game the first thing to build for me is always a cap ship factory and then build your free cap ship of your choice, send it out with like 5 frigates and start clearing out neutral planets so you can cap em quick.

how do you set the AI to easy? noob here too and i was doing ok last game till it screwed up and wouldn't let me zoom in anymore and gave me -100 supply

When you load your game and get to the screen where it shows the different teams (you and however many AI players there are), the last button in each team row is the AI difficulty. Explanation is on pages 10 & 11 of the manual.

If you try to build something you don't have the tech for, like a cruiser, go straight to the research screen. The tech you need for that item will be blue - has really helped me figure things out.

Well, I think Advent does have big enough early game disadvantages to make them difficult to use in multi player (1.04 patch is addressing those issues). However, once Advent gets up a head of steam and gets moving they are hard as hell to stop. Excellent capital ship abilities and, IMO, the best bang for buck as far as heavy cruisers in this game go.

I am also a noob and have not played online yet so I was wondering what the general online stategy was. Do you keep your ships in one big fleet or have it devided into smaller fleets both have pros and cons.

I would think something (that others have touched on) is that you need to be able to multitask in this game.

For example, when you get into a fight, don't micromanage the fight, try not to watch the fight (even though they are fun to watch)... instead go improve a planet or scout out a planet you've not been to, or build some more ships.

The AI in this game fights well - both for you and the baddies.

Don't click several things to research or build and then sit around and wait for them to complete... again, instead go improve a planet or scout out a planet you've not been to, or build some more ships.

I've found that it's really a bad idea just to find yourself sitting around waiting for something to happen. I can guarantee that if you do this a lot, eventually something will most defintely happen, and most likely it's going to be something you don't want to happen.

I understand when you're new to the game and don't have a clue as to what needs to be done... this happens to everyone when they start. The learning process sometimes presents a steep learning curve for some.

There are many posts here that cover several methods of getting started. Find one or two (or more) that you like, print them out and use those as cheat sheets. Make notes on them as to what buttons/keys and etc. you need to click or press to do the task at hand.

Soon, you will find your own best beginning strategy and ways to multitask in the game. Your own version of getting started will eventually become a habit, and you won't need your cheat sheets anymore.

This game seems to develop slow enough that you don't have to hurry hurry hurry... but you DO need to keep busy... at least until you've got enough of an empire that is fairly well along the path to your personal happiness.

One final thing I've found that works for me. If you find yourself sitting there with "nothing to do" or need to decide "which thing you want to do" -- pause the game (i.e. press the "Menu" button at the top of the screen) and take a moment or two to think about it. Then after you've decided your course of action, go back to the game and go for it.

Best of Luck and Best Regards to all...

WC

a good strategy that works 4 me is 2 1st build about 6 base frigrates, a colony ship, and clear out a couple planets (2-3) then on the 2nd planet u get build a cap ship-usually the one with colonize. then send your mini-fleet out and conquer another 2-3 planets. make sure to upgrade civ infastructure and emergency facilities (i play against medium to hard AIs). then reaserch base civ and military tech for armor, shields, regeneration, damage, extractor rate, etc. then research fleet logistics. if you are TEC, go for more cruisers. if you are Vassari of Advent go for more cap ships. also, after you have a number of planets under your belt (medium-huge maps, not small), research more advanced things. start building cruiser prototypes; they will be the mainstay of your fleet. if you are TEC focus on your trade and economy because they are your advantage over Vassari and Advent. especially the tier 8 rebellion-thing and the pervuasive economy. Advent is a little bit weaker, i have to admit, but spamming Destra Crusaders is fun. Vassari has weaker cap ships from the beginning, but once you get them to 4+, they will own. also, focus on fighters, because once you have 40+ bombers in the vicinity, you can kill a cruiser in one run (i had 5 lv 10 sova carriers and a crapload of pecherions, and i killed off my enemy so mad). so anyway, with a income of at least 30+ credits and 5+ crystal/metal, you can finally start building up a powerful fleet. for your front-line planets, i recommend doing that emergency facility thing at least twice (once for asteroids) because they are going 2 get hit a lot.

try it our people!

Here is a good way to learn. I get my home planet fully upgraded and very well defended. Get a few outter planets set up as well. Once this is set up with credits and resources rolling in, save it, let it continue runnin and goto bed. Or even let it go in background while doing other things. By the time you wake up you will have lots of resources and credits to wipe out the AI. If you happen to have been defeated, just goto load game and reload the autosave(I like this feature). Keep going down until you find one that you are still alive in. This will help you to learn which upgrades will work better in the start game.

Note: This works best with easy AI, going normal or above they turn you to space dust to soon to be worth it.....

Coilshot

I'm a newbie too (for about 2 weeks now) - the game not RTS in general. I've done some of the suggestions above - start out with Pirates off, one rival faction to start, and tailored them as "easy agressor", "easy resource" etc until I got a feel for the rhythm of the game.

Starting to bump up the risk a bit - turning on Pirates and getting a feel for that part of the game.

At same time going from small to medium to large maps - just mixing it up a bit by trial and error once I got the foundational mechanics and some basic strategy figured out.

This game is great while learning as well!