Raife
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/29/2002
From: USA
Status: offline
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Hi Eric -
Some tips for you:
First, scouting is very important. If you don't scout, you won't explore new systems. Without exploring systems, you won't be able to set up freighter routes, and eventually colonies. Each star system has a resource value, which you can use to prioritize your freigher route production. Note that the farther the system is from your homeworld (or associated colony), the less income you'll be able to get from it until you research better freighters. Closer is generally better in the beginning.
Scouting also nets you artifacts. Every world has some sort of artifact, whether it be a small amount of resources, a killer beam, or a wisdom arifact (very important).
Most of the time to get these, you need to defeat some sort of hostile, ranging from plasma bugs to lightning storms to fighter drones. After you take out the hostile(s), you'll get the artifact, which you can then transport back to a planet. Generally, the better the artifact, the tougher the fight.
Some artifacts affect planets, some affect ships, some affect both.
Wisdom arifacts are the only way you can advance to the next technology age. You need two to advance from Atomic to Fusion, and one each for Antimatter and Singularity. Advancing an age gives you access to new and better techs, which without the artifacts you can only trade for (and it's costly trading across tech levels).
Scouting also lets you contact other races, which you can communicate with as soon as you find one of their worlds. You can also hail one of their ships directly, but either one of your ships or planets needs to be within range (relatively close within a star system). More on this later.
Typically, I'll outfit my beginning scout with 2x pack rockets and 2x rocket drives. This gives you good speed & enough power to take out most sentries. Superfluous systems aren't really necessary, though two computers would also give you double the scouting range. You could really go either way, I just usually go with drives. Later on, with bigger ships, you'll have room for things like extra generators.
Research depends on how you want to play. You can only research one weapon system without penalty; each type after that adds 50% to the research cost. Keep this in mind when you select your first first weapon type, and try to limit your research to one or two weapon types throughout the game. Anything else is going to be costly. Note that things like rams & assault pods don't fall into this category. Advanced research artifacts will let you research one upgraded version of either a weapon or armor, but it will use it up in the process.
A new weapon is important, as pack rockets are awful, and largely useless against any type of shield. I'll usually go Lab/Weapon/Shield, Lab/Shield/Weapon, or skip the Lab if I think I need shield or weapon tech a bit faster (I usually don't go for armor to give my ships more durability -- armor can't self-repair until the higher tech levels). Note that Labs, Mines, and the production enhancers are useless unless you actually build one on a world (you can have one per 'city,' every 50 pop). Some techs, like Nanotechnology, just give you a general production benefit, so check the details in the tech screen.
Starships cost upkeep, so you can build more ships than you can support. An early instant starship artifact that gives you a cruiser might well send you to the poorhouse just to support it. Check your finances screen for a breakdown. Colonies cost a lot of upkeep for the first 50 years (varies by planet), so make sure you can afford it when you send that first colonization order.
When you make contact with a race, you'll want to get informants on their world(s) as soon as you can. This is the only way you can initiate tech/system trades, so it should be a priority. You'll want to at least see what techs they have. There are two differing racial philosophies in the game, Big Endian and Little Endian. These are distributed randomly at the start of every game, but the important thing is that the two philosophies are incompatible. The karmic swing is not going push you to be friends, and you cannot be allies. Just figure you've got the good guys and the bad guys in each game. Those are the bad guys.
You can only have one ally at a time, whom you can eventually federate with once you research Federation, each build corresponding Federation Laws, and build trust to 100%. Once you do this, you can call them and ask them to join your Federation. You'll get control of all their worlds and ships, and can then try to get another ally and repeat the process if you so choose. If you wait, they will probably call and ask you to join their Federation, which is really the same effect (it will be called their [race] Federation rather than yours).
Finally, each world can only build or research, not both. Spacedocks are separate, they can build starship components on their own, but building starships, freighters, informants, or production centers means you're not researching. Make sure you balance things out, and eventually start colonizing to take some of the weight off of your homeworld.
That should be enough to get you started. Have fun exploring.
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