LRFs or Ice/Volcanic Collonization?

So, you start the game an take the nearby asteroid... where to next? You can easily clear ice and volcanic worlds but you can't colonize them without 2 civic labs and their repsective techs. You can colonize desert and terran worlds but they can be difficult to clear without LRFs and the 1-3 military labs and the tech research required to produce them (race dependent, of course).

When I go for the LRFs I find it hard to scrape together the funds to get the tech and build the actual ships. When I go for the colony tech I don't have much of a fleet to do any fighting. You can't do both because you don't have the resources or the logistics space. Either way, it seems like I'm sitting around doing practically nothing waiting to get enough funds to move on.

So which do you go for in the early game- LRFs or Colonization tech?

35,685 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top

as always - depends ;)

 

personally, i like it more the military way, so i go for LRFs first, but nonetheless cleaning up any volc / ice planets in my way so they can later be colonized by a colo ship (i play TEC mainly, so i need it for the neutral extractors anyway).

i find it more important to build a strong fleet and not "waste" time by early civil tech.

 

you could of course go for early civil tech and hope to get a resource advantage, but i normally do not like this, because in multiplayer, you can be sure to be scouted and rushed if your enemy sees two civic research stations in your empire ;)

Reply #2 Top

The first thing you should do in any game is to scout so you know the map's layout.  You should be considering your second move while you're in the process of taking your first asteroid.  Sometimes there are other nearby planets (lightly guarded deserts or another asteroid, for instance) that make great targets.  Other times you will have only those ice/volcanics to expand to.  You need to consider and balance your military needs against your economic needs and then pick one path or the other.

It should be noted that with quickstart (in the expansion) it's much easier to get the colonization techs then quickly get LRF on the field anyways.  This gives you much more leeway to pursue an economic path rather than a military one.  Vasari in particular have an easy time, as once they acquire their asteroid they have enough logistics space for three labs, enough for both LRF and colonization techs.

Reply #3 Top

I have had similar problems.  See this post:  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/367946

As Darvin3 said, the problem seems to present itself more on "slow start."  That doesn't say anything bad about slow start, in fact it might very well mean "you aren't doing anything wrong, just proceed as you are."

Reply #4 Top

2 minutes into the patch and I found a horrible bug! My Akkans colonzied an Asteroid and it spawned a GREY as in belonging to no player extractor! I verified the same happened at lvl 2 of colonize, spawns 2 grey extractors. This makes Akkans useless. Further details: I am unable to scuttle or attack these extractors. They persist if planet is abandoned. They do not generate any income so I wish that there are some short term loans in the game, at least none that I can verify. I put cursor over my crystal/metal productions and it showed no income.

Reply #5 Top

2 minutes into the patch and I found a horrible bug! My Akkans colonzied an Asteroid and it spawned a GREY as in belonging to no player extractor! I verified the same happened at lvl 2 of colonize, spawns 2 grey extractors. This makes Akkans useless.
End of quote

This bug was fixed a month ago.  Are you sure you have the most recent version?