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Questions for a new player to Universe - 12/19/2014 7:40:41 PM   
greyhoundgames

 

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I noticed that an asteroid with gold is the only thing identified as a critical empire resource in my fairly new game. I have a few questions regarding this.
Is gold special in some way? I have more gold then a bunch of other luxury resources so its not my most short supplied resource

Question 2) Asteroids. How on earth is one supposed to track these, they are so tiny. I could easily see myself exploring one with the automated exploration and then not noticing it was good for mining.

3)Sorting by galactic priority. Does this mean sort based on what is selling for the most?

4) What sort of distance in my home system, is probably too far to setup a mining base on given pre warp tech. Also does everything orbit uniformly, such that these distances never change?

5) I found a ruin that said I could start researching warp field precusor project. However I cannot find that in the tech screen as something researchable.

6) In the help: "You should attempt to always maintain more capacity in research facilities than your empire currently needs. This may mean building additional space ports, or more likely dedicated research stations."
Where do you see how much your empire needs and how much you are putting out?


< Message edited by greyhoundgames -- 12/19/2014 9:03:43 PM >
Post #: 1
RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 12/19/2014 8:36:10 PM   
Aeson

 

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quote:

Is gold special in some way? I have more gold then a bunch of other luxury resources so its not my most short supplied resource

No. Gold is no more special than any of the other strategic resources. You need sources of strategic resources first, and you can worry about the luxury resources later. If your stockpile of gold is low and your demand for gold is high, say because your private sector just put in an order for 50 freighters, gold may well be a critical resource simply because you currently need it.

quote:

Question 2) Asteroids. How on earth is one supposed to track these, they are so tiny. I could easily see myself exploring one with the automated exploration and then not noticing it was good for mining.

There is a check box in the Expansion Planner that allows asteroids to show up in the lists. The side panel for mining targets, found at the left edge of the main window, has a toggle button at the top of the list that shows or hides asteroids in the list.

Regardless, I would generally not worry about asteroids. Planets and moons are usually better mining targets because they usually have several resources on them, while asteroids generally only have a single resource present. If this is a prewarp start and you don't have another option for obtaining the resource and you need it, then go ahead and build a mining station there, but otherwise I would not bother. You'll have plenty of potential mining targets without asteroids cluttering up the list once you explore a few systems.

quote:

3)Sorting by galactic priority. Does this mean sort based on what is selling for the most?

The Expansion Planner filters do not sort the list, they filter them. If you want to sort by what sells for the most, you'll need to sort the list of resources by cost and filter the list of potential mining locations by resource. I'm not entirely certain how the game determines galaxy priority, but I would expect that this has to do with the (unfulfilled) demand for the resource.

quote:

4) What sort of distance in my home system, is probably too far to setup a mining base on given pre warp tech. Also does everything orbit uniformly, such that these distances never change?

Planets do not orbit their stars at a constant angular rate. Thus, the relative position of the planets will change as time passes. The same is true for the moons of a planet, if it has more than one.

As far as distances go, if you have any hyperdrive at all, in-system distances more or less do not matter. If you do not have a hyperdrive yet, then it's best to stick to the moon(s) of your homeworld or, if you were lucky, of the gas giant your homeworld orbits. Mining other planets in the system is workable, but it results in significant fuel consumption and leaves you with long, vulnerable strings of freighters crisscrossing the system, and it's also difficult to properly defend the mining stations once pirates start coming to visit if you lack hyperdrive technology.

quote:

5) I found a ruin that said I could start researching warp field precusor project. However I cannot find that in the tech screen as something researchable.

Warp Field Precursors is in the Energy and Construction tree in the research screen, which you can open by clicking on the blue tab between the red (Weapons) and green (High Tech) tabs. It's at the left edge of the tree, a bit below the reactor technologies. If you can find any of the other hyperdrive technologies, you can trace the branches back to the left to find Warp Field Precursors.

quote:

6) In the help: "You should attempt to always maintain more capacity in research facilities than your empire currently needs. This may mean building additional space ports, or more likely dedicated research stations."
Where do you see how much your empire needs and how much you are putting out?

If you open the research screen, the grey tab (the one on the far right) has some stuff in it. The Total Empire Research Potential, highlighted on the right side of the screen, is the total required capacity to maximize your research output, while the total currently existing research capacity is shown at the bottom of the chart on the left. The sum of the research capacities in each field should be at least equal to the Total Empire Research Potential if you want to maximize your research output.

(in reply to greyhoundgames)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 12/19/2014 8:47:21 PM   
greyhoundgames

 

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Thank you so much for all these great answers. Some followups based on your responses
This is a prewarp game FYI

I am nowhere near the empire research. I assume this is because I have only one planet. The planet is close to max, it has 4 of 4 in each axis on the little chart.

I had only 1 of the essential strategic resources. I did setup a pirate to suppply me, but one of the asteroids nearyby had like 70/70 of steel and lead so I grabbed that. It is somewhat far away.

I also mined a planet that started almost exactly beside me because it had great gas production, however as time has gone by its getting farther and farther away so that may have been a mistake. Watching a freighter he spent 25 fuel to get there, so 50 round trip. He picks up however 2000 gas. This seems like even if he had to use all his fuel to get somewhere, he would still easily cover the cost. However maybe the problem is maintenance?

I have a construction underway that is saying it is stalled due to shortages. I have tons of the resource in question. Is this happening because its far away and freighters have to bring it resources in shifts as it builds itself?

Pirates occasionally offer me shipping deals. However I cannot see these on the diplomacy screen or ask for more deals from the other pirate I have met. Is this just an invisible thing or is it shown somewhere.

I do have some long chains of freighters. I am currently showing 343k private sector with 49 private ships and 12k in maintance. It shows fuel cost as 0 for whatever reason. My own Ship and base maintance is 16k with tax revenue of 17k so im in the red atm. This may because I have a bunch of these mining bases all around the system. It also prompted me to build a bunch of military that is currently idle 99% of the time.

Also whats with pirates. I have had to restart a few games becauase some pirate refuses to honor his protection thing and just sits at my base killing everything. From a gameplay perspective, that is pretty silly. There is nothing I can do about it apart from making a new game.

< Message edited by greyhoundgames -- 12/19/2014 10:21:31 PM >

(in reply to Aeson)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 12/19/2014 11:27:53 PM   
Aeson

 

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quote:

I have a construction underway that is saying it is stalled due to shortages. I have tons of the resource in question. Is this happening because its far away and freighters have to bring it resources in shifts as it builds itself?

If you have construction stalled due to lack of a resource you have plenty of, then the resource is not in the correct location, and freighters should eventually correct the problem.

quote:

Pirates occasionally offer me shipping deals. However I cannot see these on the diplomacy screen or ask for more deals from the other pirate I have met. Is this just an invisible thing or is it shown somewhere.

I'm not sure what you mean by shipping deals. Perhaps you mean protection arrangements? If so, protection arrangements do show up in the diplomacy menu as a slightly different color of line under the pirate faction's name and as a positive relations modifier if you select the pirate faction. However, I would suggest that you should be careful of accepting pirate protection arrangements as they are far more expensive than they sound at first - the cost offered is monthly, and the economic summary in the top right of the screen is yearly income. To put them on comparable terms, you have to multiply by 12, meaning that even inexpensive arrangements can easily cost you as much as a couple of small warships or infantry divisions.

Another possibility is that the pirates are offering to sell you information of some kind - system maps, special locations, empire contact, or colony locations. If you or the other empire has hyperdrive, empire contact enables trade, and it will always enable diplomacy, and it's typically cheap, so it might not be a bad deal, though you should remember that the empire is likely relatively nearby and thus should be relatively easily found once you have a decent hyperdrive. Independent colony locations are kind of hit or miss, as pirates love to hang out around independents in force and early on you don't really have the military capacity to seriously challenge a strong pirate faction, but on the other hand an independent colony is just a troop ship away from being a far more valuable and cheaper addition to your empire than a colony founded by your empire will be for quite some time. Special locations can be worth a visit to see if there's any nice free stuff you can pick up easily, like advanced warships (though if these are operational, or if there were some operational warships present at game start, they may have already been claimed by pirates, leaving only the disabled ships behind) or ruins with interesting effects. System maps are basically worthless, especially since you don't know what system the pirates will be selling you a map of, and paying for a map of an empty system is kind of just throwing money away, especially since it's quite easy to map systems yourself once you obtain a decent hyperdrive for your exploration ships. You can ask the pirates to sell you these kinds of things in the diplomacy menu, but if they don't have anything they want to (or can) sell to you the options for these won't be present.

If you want to set up a pirate mission, such as offering a reward to ship in Caslon, then you'll want to select a station or colony and look in the lower left corner of the screen. One of the buttons along the bottom of the selection detail panel is for assigning pirate smuggling missions, which allow you to offer a bonus for importing resources (you can either choose a specific resource or you can leave it as a bonus for bringing in any resources, but you can only offer one smuggling contract per base or colony at a time), and a button to offer a pirate defense mission, which allows pirate factions to bid for a contract to leave a few of their warships at the colony or station you currently have selected with the intent that the pirate faction that wins the bid will use its ships to defend the location for you. You can also offer a contract to attack something you don't own in much the same way. Be careful with pirate missions, especially smuggling missions. They can be expensive (especially the generic resources smuggling missions, though that may not be as apparent since all transactions related to resources come out of the private sector's pockets, including the bonus that you decided to offer for shipping in resources), they can be unreliable or ineffective, and they fund pirate ships that may later be haunting your shipping lanes.

quote:

I do have some long chains of freighters. I am currently showing 343k private sector with 49 private ships and 12k in maintance. It shows fuel cost as 0 for whatever reason. My own Ship and base maintance is 16k with tax revenue of 17k so im in the red atm. This may because I have a bunch of these mining bases all around the system. It also prompted me to build a bunch of military that is currently idle 99% of the time.

About the fuel costs, it might just be that the private sector hasn't purchased any fuel yet this year, as the fuel cost is a year-to-date value. The state doesn't pay the maintenance costs for the mining stations; more likely, your base maintenance is mostly your home space port, defensive bases, and perhaps a research station.

quote:

I also mined a planet that started almost exactly beside me because it had great gas production, however as time has gone by its getting farther and farther away so that may have been a mistake. Watching a freighter he spent 25 fuel to get there, so 50 round trip. He picks up however 2000 gas. This seems like even if he had to use all his fuel to get somewhere, he would still easily cover the cost. However maybe the problem is maintenance?

Fuel costs vary with trip duration, so even if it's 50 fuel now, it may not be 50 fuel later. Also, unless this is your only distant mine and unless you already have energy collectors on all your ships and stations, the trip between the gas mine and the homeworld is hardly the only drain on your fuel supply. Bases that lack energy collectors will consume fuel over time, which freighters will generally eventually try to replenish and in the process will burn fuel getting to the station. The freighters will also burn fuel going to or from mines for other resources (and be aware that the game isn't necessarily smart about freighter assignments - it may well task an empty freighter at the homeworld to go pick up a load of steel from an asteroid mine even though there is an equally large freighter already on the way delivering fuel, and that second freighter may just end up idling next to the mine for a while after dropping off its load of fuel while the first freighter slowly travels to the mine with an empty cargo hold and eventually back with a load of steel simply because the second freighter wasn't technically available at the time the computer decided to pick up the load of steel).

(in reply to greyhoundgames)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 12/20/2014 6:00:03 AM   
greyhoundgames

 

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By shipping deals I meant where the pirates bring you resources for money.

The only other question that has come up so far is, after finding some space scorpions, my fleet ai would send 2 guys at a time to be destroyed there and slowly sent my entire army until they had all died. Even if they had all gone at once they would have been way out classed.

(in reply to Aeson)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 12/20/2014 2:23:50 PM   
Aeson

 

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Joined: 8/30/2013
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quote:

The only other question that has come up so far is, after finding some space scorpions, my fleet ai would send 2 guys at a time to be destroyed there and slowly sent my entire army until they had all died. Even if they had all gone at once they would have been way out classed.

Build fast ships with missiles and set their engagement preferences to standoff. They should then mostly stay out of range of the Giant Kaltors and be able to kill them in safety.

(in reply to greyhoundgames)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 5/13/2015 3:53:21 AM   
Etherhibba


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When dealing with pre-warp tech, you want to build mining bases as close to your home planet as possible. When starting out try to generate a galaxy with a good starting system for yourself to help you get started. Make sure to get a supply of helium early on, you'll need it.

Not to mention your fleets can re-fill at gas mining stations, built on gas giants for mining hydrogen/helium/etc.


< Message edited by Etherhibba -- 5/13/2015 4:57:31 AM >


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Don't hide pls, my fleet will find u

(in reply to Aeson)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 7/9/2015 10:43:39 AM   
NephilimNexus

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aeson
Build fast ships with missiles and set their engagement preferences to standoff. They should then mostly stay out of range of the Giant Kaltors and be able to kill them in safety.


Fighters work even better. A single fighter bay + Evade can take out nearly any size Kaltor swarm, given time.

(in reply to Aeson)
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RE: Questions for a new player to Universe - 7/9/2015 4:26:58 PM   
Aeson

 

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quote:

Fighters work even better. A single fighter bay + Evade can take out nearly any size Kaltor swarm, given time.

True, but you cannot possibly lack access to missiles no matter how early it is in the game whereas you can lack access to fighters, and as this was a response to a question from a new player at an early stage in their game, I went with an answer that works regardless of tech. Lots of armor and a handful of blasters would also work.

Also, a single ship with any weapon and the ability and inclination to stay at range is capable of defeating arbitrarily large Kaltor swarms given enough time. I've occasionally killed the huge swarm at one of the storyline monitoring bases off in deep space with one ship armed with Maxos Blasters and a bit of patience and management to keep it from running into the swarm rather than around or away from the swarm while evading its current target; it's not like fighters are special in their ability to kill off large Kaltor swarms.

(in reply to NephilimNexus)
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