My personal strategy guide

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Thinker55
Krill Swarm
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 7:25 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#46 Post by Thinker55 »

Maybe I need to put this somewhere else... I'm at turn 90 -- and I can't build combat craft! I can design them, but they don't show up on the build list of any of my colonies. I haven't been attacked -- yet -- but a neighbor is going to run all over me soon... Any guesses why this is? I have capacity, plenty of research, and only about 10 ships... Have I hit a bug or something?

Thinker55
Krill Swarm
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 7:25 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#47 Post by Thinker55 »

Never mind -- I figured it out. I was trying to use asteroid tech without a reformation processor.

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Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
Posts: 6095
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:56 pm
Location: Sol III

Re: My personal strategy guide

#48 Post by Vezzra »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:42 am...once FO gets into beta phase (maybe before mankind runs out of fossil fuels)...
An optimistic estimate... :mrgreen:

truepurple
Space Kraken
Posts: 156
Joined: Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:09 am

Re: My personal strategy guide

#49 Post by truepurple »

You say scout scout outpost.

Build a outpost, not a colony? Why? Isn't generally the point of building outposts besides taping into asteroids or gas giants, just connecting supply lines? That's assuming there are even options for that purpose, so very situational rather than a standard start build?

Also sometimes I got to produce lots of scouts just to find a good planet to plant the colony ship you start out with. Especially as I lose lots of scouts to system guardian monsters. I also like to build several colonys on good nearby-ish planets so sometimes I can really spam scouts. What's the problem with this?

Also I have set my home planet to production (temporarily) after getting some key research done to quickly pump out some colony's for fast expansion. Is this a bad idea? If so why?

After Algorithmic Elegance I always research The Physical Brain. I don't know what I need to build it's structure elsewhere, but I can always build it on my homeworld, 5 more research a turn and neither the tech nor the structure take very long. But that isn't even on your list.

Why research Mass drivers when you can skip to Lasers and save some research? Laser doesn't take long to research. I hold off on building attack ships till I get my first level of laser.

What do you mean by a ship hull being too big or small for a weapo type?

wobbly
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 1880
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#50 Post by wobbly »

I'm assuming you're replying to the 1st post in the thread. Look at the post date, its 5 years old. Don't expect it to line up properly with the current state of the game. The poster hasn't even logged on for 5 years, I doubt he'll answer your questions.

defaultuser
Juggernaut
Posts: 854
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 6:15 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#51 Post by defaultuser »

One of the problems with this guide, not even considering its age, is that it's difficult to give specific guidance on some of these things because the game depends so much on starting conditions. A game against non-aggressive AIs with a large number of systems each is very different than a compact game against maniacal AIs. Your starting species matters as well.

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human2
Pupating Mass
Posts: 97
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2020 3:22 am
Location: USA, Utah, Salt Lake City

Re: My personal strategy guide

#52 Post by human2 »

I feel like I'm opening a can of worms by posting this, but here it goes. I'm not sure if I really want advice because there's still a lot in this game that I don't understand, and if I understood it all it would take away some of the fun.

I had many different play styles but in one game I encountered something I'd never seen before and it blew me away. There were these massively difficult monsters and some of my ships turned white and started going AWOL and then whole star systems started going super-nova. If you don't already know what this is, I don't want to ruin the surprise. But I'll just say I played that game over and over until I figured out how to survive. I am not sure I want to mention this because maybe the developers will take it away. But the only way I could win games like this was with Gateway to the Void placed in strategic places to keep my worlds safe from monsters.

So now, I play all my games with everything on random, maniacal AI, I really like ring systems but sometimes I'll play something else, and the number of AI's and stars just depend on how much time I have (I once tried a game with over 1000 systems and it was a huge map and took forever and I never finished it). I always play Human. Usually, my games are punctuated with moments of suspense because to win against the really mean monsters I have to do a lot of gambling at the start. And honestly, I don't really like losing and wasting my time so if I do mess up I'll just undo the move until I get it right, which is basically what I did when I found the mean monsters--except I had to keep starting over from turn 1.

Oh, and now I only play the weekly builds because Influence makes it so much more interesting. Games without Influence are too easy and have kind of become boring. Besides managing Influence, the other biggest differences in the weekly builds are that games are much slower, I no longer colonize everything I can, and Exobots are more trouble than they are worth. I play Humans because they have good influence and by mid-game, just about every Human world, which is most of them, are set to Influence and I usually have Propaganda Broadcasts as well.

The strategy I developed was to get the Robocruiser Lz ASAP. I'm not sure what turn I usually produce them, but it's around 30 or 40. So at the start of the game, the only warship I have is the one that I start with. Unless something forces me to do something differently (like wandering monsters), I usually research in this order.

Beginning

- The Physical Brain
- Algorithmic Elegance
- Planetary Ecology
- Subterranean Habitation
- Robotic Production
- Military Robotic Control
- Improved Engine Couplings
- Zortium Armor Plating
- Laser Weapons
- Active Radar

I'll usually produce 3-4 troopships to go take over natives if they show up, or I'll make outposts. I scout as much as I can but if my scouts die I don't really build new ones unless I feel threatened by nearby AI's and need to keep an eye on their movements. I colonize the nearest nicest planet with the starting colony ship asap. And then I wait and wait and try to stay alive by destroying as many AI scouts as possible to prevent them from sending ships at my unprotected planets until I get my first Robocruizer Lz. Then I start building as many of those as I can and I get aggressive.

Next phase (not always in this order)

- Basic Damage Control
- Reinforced Hull (and everything that it requires)
- Nascent Artificial Intelligence
- Symbiotic Biology
- Laser 2-4
- Nanotech Production
- Adaptive Automation
- Fusion Generation
- 1st level defense stuff if AI's are nearby and act threateningly
- Orbital Habitation (and all it requires, this is usually the last thing I research in this phase because it takes a long time)

- Terraforming or Xenological Hybridization
- Industrial Centers (I don't research this earlier because I rarely have worlds focused on industry)
- Orbital Generation
- Diamond Armor Plating
- Plasma Cannons
- Neutron Scanner
- Contra Gravitational Maintenance

At this point, the game can go in many different ways, but by now I should have all stationary monsters destroyed and I've had several skirmishes with AI and maybe even taken over some AI planets. My AI strategy is basically to keep them out of my territory by destroying scouts and trying to lure AI ships away from their worlds and keeping their fleet numbers down.

The next phase includes more of the previous stuff. Since I switched to weekly builds, I often don't get to Mass Production Specialization, Death Ray, and Xentonium Armor Plating until the end.

And to be honest I don't think I've had any really dangerous monsters since I've played the weekly builds. So I have no idea if this strategy will still work with them. I believe the really big monsters come out around turn 200, so at that point, I start looking. If I see them, I pull back, research Gateway to the Void ASAP (sometimes I have to go back 20 or 30 turns and change tactics earlier on), and try to set up bottlenecks to keep the bad monsters at bay.

Anyway, I still think this is my favorite single-player game I play, but it sure can take a long time. I have an active imagination and so I kind of have this fuzzy story going on in my mind when I play, kind of like watching Star Wars or Stargate, or some other sci-fi movie on fast forward. I don't pay too close attention to the species Pedia descriptions because then I can imagine my own personality for them sort of. It's kind of weird. Anyway, there's my can of worms.

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human2
Pupating Mass
Posts: 97
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2020 3:22 am
Location: USA, Utah, Salt Lake City

Re: My personal strategy guide

#53 Post by human2 »

I should add that I like to listen to music like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GKx2MPveMQ.

I'd also like to add that I've played at least 2 games where I've had to drag planets around in order to create Gateway to the Void roadblocks. I've had the games go into the 500+ turns. There's a bug where the longer a game takes the slower it gets. I'd really like to figure out how to debug that someday. I think it would be really interesting to make AI's too. I'd like to make games that pit AI's against each other without any players.

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LienRag
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 2148
Joined: Fri May 17, 2019 5:03 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#54 Post by LienRag »

Only Organic-species-bearing ships go AWOL in presence of Psionic Snowflakes.

I never encountered the Supernova thing, though ?

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Grummel7
Space Dragon
Posts: 335
Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:44 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#55 Post by Grummel7 »

LienRag wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 3:18 pm I never encountered the Supernova thing, though ?
Space dragons carry nova bombs.

defaultuser
Juggernaut
Posts: 854
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 6:15 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#56 Post by defaultuser »

For the rogue ships, look up Psionic Snowflake. The obvious solution is to use pilots not affected by their powers when close to them. The big problem with Experimenters is when they've spawned and left to go too long. Then the area is infested and more dangerous critters are in play.

Gateway to the Void is a legitimate tool for whatever purpose. It's certainly a way to clean up or contain a spawned area if you're too busy with AIs.

RuthScott
Space Krill
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2022 2:28 pm

Re: My personal strategy guide

#57 Post by RuthScott »

thanks for sharing

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