A few things I learned by playing:

-Choice of cap ship is important. If you are looking to grab territory fast than pick your first cap ship to be one that has Colonize ability. Otherwise just get the one that is meanest in a straight up fight (Kols, Radiance, Kortul), it makes a big difference when trying to conquer neutral planets that have big militias.

-Trade is a big moneymaker. Don't skimp on it.

-Don't always try to outbribe pirates, intercepting their fleets with yours can get your cap ship valuable experience.

-Always start out the game by building scout frigates and setting them to autoexplore. By the time you have your first cap ship, your scouts will have revealed most of the map to you. Use this info to decide on what planets make the best chokepoints, and put priority on capturing those first. You'll also have to figure out based on the location of the pirate base what planets you should fortify to protect against pirate raids.

Great Stuff!!!!  

Have to agree with the Trade thing. Get Tradeports up and running as quickly as is viable. They generate a ton of income, which you can use to buy the other resources as needed.

Fumikaa, your tips are all valid, but logistically not quite on the money.


Critical Note:
The main idea with colonizing planets is to capture metal/crystal extractors, because, other than the initial negative credit income (which must be immediately gotten rid of [Like, as soon as the planet is captured.. save resources for this]), your secondary planet's bonus credit income is much much less than what your capitol (home world) is giving you. Also, while Crystal is more "Valuable" than metal early game, metal is equally necessary to make frigates early game, which is the main idea of the game after all. Conversely, it is definitely true that you MUST upgrade your population cap (infrastructure) of your home planet as soon as the game starts, because this will be a huge boom for your credit income since your home planet produces like.. 5x the credit income per population as other planets.


Unless you go for the colonizer cap ship, you will need to get a colony ship.

Note:
Colony ships take a while to regenerate anti-matter reserves.

Note:
What limits colonizing in the early game the most is actually the anti-matter reserves on your colony ship.

Note:
Your colony ship is going to lose 90 antimatter every phase jump.


Therefore, it is incorrect to conclude that the order in which you take planets should depend chiefly upon which planet has crystal/metal extractors.

No, the real trick is to take all of your initial planets in a row. Ie: Maximize the rate at which you acquire planets (and extractors of all types), by minimizing the amount of antimatter that your colony ship loses in the process of "jumping".



I advise everyone to try this last bit about the colony ship.

Also, I want to stress that there are specific build orders for the three races that often work best. I have posted them in several places and so will not here, but essentially the idea is that the "light frigates" that you can get without military research are worthless because they lose to the "long range frigates"...

Basically the biggest differences between a "noob" and an "experienced" player is that "noobs" typically end up with no fleet once the game starts to heat up, partially as a consequence of incorrect ideas about economic management, but primarily because they insist on making inferior ships or on "focusing on teching to trade ports" really early on. Mind you, trade ports are good, and must be obtained when the time is right, but the "right" time is not as soon as the game starts. The "right" time is after you've had your first engagement, but will be circumstantial depending upon the game.

As Aristotle once taught Alexander The Great, everything decision must be made on the circumstances around you. Decisions are always "it depends" ones, barring the initial build orders that are spread throughout this forum.

LOOK:
If you're a "noob" and you want to be competitive, you have to amass a large fleet before getting civic research, unless that research is prerequisite to colonizing enough planets to obtain enough extractors to have a competitive economy.

ALRIGHT HERE IT IS

THIS IS MY STARTING BUILD ORDER FOR THE GENERAL CASE (ie: all 3 races)


1) Build cap ship factory (Get your cap ship factory first to get your cap ship sooner. I take advantage of the fact that the first cap ship is free, and that it is my best bet to capture asteroids even sooner. This will result in getting the mines on your asteroid or second planet much earlier, and will make up for building the mines on your home world slightly later than usual.)

Build 2 scouts

Upgrade population limit of home planet (Your home planet is almost solely responsible for your credit income early game; adding 30% extra population should result in a 30% increase in your credit income!)

2) Build Capitol ship, preferably one that has an awesome lv 6 ability (this will be the ship most likely to get to level 6+). I like to build a carrier cap ship, but any one with a good 6+ ability is equally valid.

Build a colony frigate

Build mines at home world (DO THIS AS SOON AS OR BEFORE CAP FACTORY IS DONE).

Scout! (Capture neutral asteroid mines if vasari)

3) Send Cap ship to first asteroid to wipe out pirates

If you wont make another cap ship scuttle your cap ship factory

Send colony ship to just outside gravity well where it can instantly be sent to the asteroid. (SEND IT AS SOON AS IT HAS 180 ANTIMATTER)

Keep scouting!!!

Get a few (Only between 4-5) light frigates unless you're advent or are playing against an advent player, but only get these light frigates if you feel you need them at all.

Get enough military labs to allow research for long rage frigates (Either Assailant, Javelis LRM, or in adven't case, it is actually better to get drone hosts or defense vessels first)

4) Acquire your first asteroid and have it make all of the mines.

Upgrade the pop capacity of the asteroid!!! (This will result in MUCH LESS NEGATIVE credit income.)

Upgrade the prototype research for your next tier of frigate (ie: long range or defense vessel/drone host) and start pumping these ships out of your frigate factory.

If you only have one asteroid nearby and the other planets require civic research to acquire (ie: ice or volcanic worlds), get TWO (2) civic research labs NOW. Otherwise, this can wait.

Note: If it is possible to acquire 4-5 planets or asteroids without getting any civic research labs then do not get the labs unless you feel it is essential to your strategy (They are a waste of money until later in the game otherwise).


At this point specific species dependent strategies diverge. For vasari, I like to get a military lab at my asteroid and start pumping assailants. For TEC, I like to get 2 millitary labs and start getting LRMs. For Advent I get 1 millitary lab and then 2 more at my third planet.

In any event, this strategy should work for all three species initially and should result in maximizing credit/resource income in the first 10 minutes of the game or so. If anyone has any better ideas or wishes to improve upon this one please post.

THE BELOW WAS COPY AND PASTED ALONG WITH THE REST REGARDING A POST ABOUT WHETHER IT IS WORTH IT TO GET MORE CAP SHIPS OR MORE "FRIGATES"

AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED FROM MY "SCRAP CAP SHIP FACTORY" build order, I DO NOT FIND CAP SHIPS WORTH THEIR BUCK IN THE GENERAL CASE (UNLESS IM PLAYING ADVENT).

THE DETAILS OF THIS IDEA ARE BELOW

With regard to capitol ships versus frigates, I tend to agree with much of what has been said already. I will use vasari as an example as I play with them most often.

you do not get nearly as much bang for the buck with cap ships at lower levels. Specifically, 5 enforcers is much better than one cap ship. However, as the game progresses it becomes necessary to have bigger and bigger tanks within your fleet. For this reason (because large battleships can "TANK"), it becomes necessary to build several larger battleships later on. Also, as fleets get larger, and because even though experience is divided evenly among cap ships, each progressive level of experience requires exponentially more experience to acquire (the idea being to maximize the number of LEVELS your cap ships have together), it is worth it to build several more capitol ships. I like to have around 6 in a large fleet. I usually have 6 battleship tanks and 1 carrier cap ship)


~Arcturus

Play on small maps against 1, then 2, easy AI to learn the basic game mechanics. Try each of the races to see which one you like. Then step up the AI difficulty, then increase map size, then increase the number of opponents.

Good points! Okay, here's my first try at helping someone here:

Since you can't do anything without money, and percentages early mean lots of money later, I don't skimp on the research for trading, or even population increases or crystal/metal increases, especially if I'm low in one or the other because all of the nearest planets are all desert or all ice.

I like a high percentage of cap ships to fleet ratio. That is, I will upgrade my fleet in terms of capitol ships first before increasing overall level (and thus adding to fleet costs). I avoid raising fleet costs for as long as possible, usually after I've completed the first two to three tiers of research ("best of" on both military and civil) and snared trading income. And I will buy the planet logistics upgrades in order to do so.

I try not to increase fleet percentage to 38% until I've got at least 5-6 good planets, but this is not always possible when there are a lot of phase lanes. I don't increase to 9% cost until I have 2 capital ships and need a third and have at least my homeworld, home asteroid, preferably two other planets and trading, but with 4 players that isn't always possible, especially if one of them is hard/aggressive. It's best to learn with all opponents normal or easy, and only one aggressive, the rest researchers or economists. Then when you compare your graphs with theirs you know how you compared. Between an aggressive, researcher and economist, I like to be the line that is in the middle on most things, or better on income and equal on fleet.

It goes a little like this:

Upgrade planet's pop fully. There's no income until you do.

Use the black market to buy about 200 in crystals, you'll need them right away. Buy when you need as long as they're cheaper than 350. When you have extras, place them on the market to sell to other players at the good price. You can get it back by right-clicking if no one buys and you suddenly need them.

Place all crystal/mineral extractors. Again, no income until you do, but even if you do, no income until the planet's upgraded.

Build two scouts. Yes, two. Use direct commands (click then shift-click) to find out what all your closest planets are, with both ending at your home for new instructions, or ending up at the outermost-planet and going on automatically. Toggle OFF the automatic wander around the universe option for now on at least one of them, get intel on only the closest as fast as you can.

Build capital ship factory. It's a fast build.

Pick capital ship with colonizing ability. It's one less thing to worry about. As far as I know, bombs go farther, and they're definitely better on planets and structures, so I usually pick my squadrons to be heavier in bombers than fighters and dock them right away. Work on creating discrete (seperate) fleets with a good combination of two or three capital ships. Don't choose every ability, only choose two and upgrade them as your ability points acrue. Otherwise they eat up too much antimatter and your ship is a sitting duck for too long. It's really painful to lose an experienced capital ship! You can pick two of the same with great battle abilities, pick two of the four abilities on one and the other two on the other, then pick a second type of capital ship that is mostly a supporter (Advent really needs the shield help, it's easier to shield them than make them more battle-worty).

Pick logistics. If your asteroid doesn't have any phase lanes but towards your own home world, take full advantage of the fact that it's isolated and unassailable - load it up with moneymaking rather than war machines. Satellites for research, trading. Try to do one civil and one military right away.

Buy cheapest (in terms of metal/crystals), easy-access frigates and the best one you can get (in terms of hull strength if in doubt, or not too particular about what it fires at) at about a 3 to 1 ratio. (Mid-game when you're taking over planets that are owned and not neutral is the time to get some planet bombers.)

Don't spend all your money or use up all your fleet points yet, becuase you're going to colonize your asteroid next, just as soon as you have a capital ship and at least 4-6 frigates. If, alas, there's a fleet there, do the math - if their hull points greatly add up to more than your hull points, let them battle it out until your capital ship has most of the shield gone and retreat. Once you acquire the asteroid, upgrade it and install extractors, choose logistics and military, visit research if you bought a research satellite and have cash/crystal.

Tip: When creating fleets, be sure and turn off the auto-join unless you really want it to suck up every other ship around and risk losing a ship that was being repaired or a scout/colonizer that was waiting for orders. I find standard or loose works best. Tight tends to only work well when you have two or three fleets and can maneuver them to encircle and entrap the enemy, but I could be wrong. I don't always micromanage battles.

Next time you have the funds, put it into research. Buy whatever's in the first level that will do you the most good based on what you know now (all nearest planets are ice, perhaps.) Anything that increases your planet's population (make sure it's a type of planet you own) or output of whatever mineral you're short in, or will be short in (count asteroids closest). Get the military ones that are always good no matter what. (Repair platform, hangers, hull strength, shield strength...). Next objective is right to trading posts.

Come back to the research page whenever you're:
ahead in money and fleet is fully built up. Money sitting around does you no good, unless you're earmarking it for a capital ship.
have just constructed a new civil or military research center, new things are unlocked.

are getting killed and need ships that last longer.
If TEC, the different ships that you have to research for are for most part a luxury, you don't really need all of them except for looks, thrilling battle scenes, so save them for your third or fourth army/hostile takeover. The LRM is worth it.
Keep an eye on the pirates. If it's cheap enough, buy them off. If it's not, heck, they're pretty easy to kill and outnumber and it will rank up your experience.

The first third of the game, don't give anyone your crystal or metal. Credits maybe.
AI rarely says okay to anything but trade. I've gotten very friendly with them and they still say no. So don't waste your funds. What IS fun to do is to play a game as an ally and then declaring war on them after you've killed everyone else. Bout the only way to win as Advent is to ally with an Advent AI. It's a fun way to play actually, you get to see -- from the start -- everything they know about ships and planets, so half the galaxy is discovered before your scout ships have even made it to the fourth planet. And they'll fight the pirates with you.

The more phase lanes, the tougher to defend. When in doubt of which planet to go for next, or which map to choose/design, as a beginner go for the one with the fewest phase lanes. If you haven't researched for faster travel yet, always pick the closest no matter if it has crystal and you already have more crystal than metal. Buying back planets you once owned is a major pain. Keep what you get. I wouldn't play Advent on a map with a lot of phase lanes unless I was allied. So far on a medium custom map I've captured nine planets, lost one, as Advent, and my fleet is still at a measly 38% of income. Woo hoo!

This much always works well for me. The rest depends on the type of map and enemies, and which empire I'm playing. When playing TEC against TEC I tend to build up my fleet more, buying more metal from the black market than crystal.

Hope that helps!

ShelleyCat

The post didn't mention whether this was for AI or online, it only mentioned "total newbie." I've only played AI but that's no reason to go into attack mode. Don't most total newbies tend to play AI first in order to learn the game? Wake up and smell the anti-matter, dude.

Yeah against AIs multiple caps are a good strategy.. but against AIs just about any strategy can work, since the AIs don't formulate strategies.

But I will concede that later in the game, (say after the 1st fleet size upgrade), getting a second cap ship isn't a bad plan if and only if you are going for some advent cap ship combos or are sufficiently late in the game to need some additional siege damage... Getting extra frigates always gains you more bang for the buck.

Build Orders

I got this game like 3 days ago, and been playing all the time. Practicing against the AI before going online. After playing a 4-hour game with a normal AI, I've got control of more than half of the medium galaxy, with everything researched to the max. I'm TEC and they're Advent, and all I'm doing now is chasing their fleet around from system to system because they keep running when my fleet shows up.