As a new player, I'd really encourage you to read the manual, cover to cover.

I'm almost certain your question is answered in there, and most people will encourage you to read the manual as well.

Good luck and welcome aboard it's a great game.

Thanks folks , kinda expected the manual to minimal but after reading some threads its apparently really big which is good. Going to start reading now. Then I will try and convince some person on mp to let me watch them . I think some of my issues was perhaps because I went a differant faction from the one in the tutorial and the ships were named slightly differantly. I also believe what you are saying about it being a great game, too me it looks very good having barely played and I checked numerous reviews prior to making the purchase and the game got consistant 8.9 and 9.0 reviews which is immpresive.

(cheers for info about scouts , in hind sight it seems obvious but I imagine that advice alone will help me immeasurably)

Thanks for the welcome! Away to RTM

The manual is a good size but the game has lots of details that it doesnt mention. Like scouts on autoexplore? That and myriad other commands are never mentioned. Its like the game publisher expects the player to learn through trial and error. Why do publishers create great games and add incomplete manuals?? To keep costs down? But this is at a cost to the player, imo. In the late 1980's I got games like Harpoon which were just as complex and detailed but it came with a _thorough_manual. Give us a decent manual I say! *Phew!* Thanks for letting me get that off my chest!

Btw, I'm 52 and I start playing late at night sometimes and go until early morning. I'm a bit sleep deprived myself sometimes. I'm on a Sins of a Solar Empire schedule! Heh.

Nice [Gives me incentive to start attempting to get my father off pro evolution soccer and into some deeper games......hes in his sixties, only been really into PCs when he bought one 5 years back , hes almost completely assimilated though! ] , Im every bit as bad with the PC in general , Im actually thinking of getting a screen filter as every now and then I get bad migranes and Im pretty positive its because of the monitors.

Just firing through the game manual as we speak and browsing forums, Im finding it a steep learning curve as well but Ive been looking for a strat that ecompasses colinisation in the way this game does and to a more epic and realistic scale where large battles are possible i.e losing ground but being able to hit and run and take ground back (Thats why the huge games appeal to me, many possibilities so Im going to put the effort in learning this game)

Just milling over some of the other stuff mentioned and Im not sure but I may just try another sp game after reading the manual, was going to watch MP but Im thinking maybe it would be more fun to figure the basics out on my own to a point, dont want to spoil anything

Cheers all!

Update: Been through the manual , I think Im going to go the same faction from the tutorial initially and hopefully I should be fine, I was just browsing these forums though to get an idea of whats to come so I came across links on this site to video contest entries and them from those I came across a link on youtube posted by some person that shows some major combat, must admit REALLY nice video its called vasari invasion:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lMY2onLXe0U&NR=1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TWIJED2HhAY&feature=related (Sorry not meaning to spam but another class vid , gameplay wise)

Hopefully I will do better now in SP but after that video Im very afraid of MP lol, looks great though if you know how to handle massive battles! Think I would have a brain hemorrhage though trying to micro manage all that lol (We will have too see but seriously good you can have massive battles)

Thats me been through the manual and some basics on the forum now. I also did another game and heres how I started but I got badly owned. I think I understand it slightly more but heres my order of things, just before submitting my order my plan was to make my first planet full of civic like things so I could have some good ecconomics to finance a war.(That was the failed plan )

Ok so to the best of my memmory , heres how I started out:

built extractors on the 3 asteriods in the system, next I thought ok its essential to get a good influx of resources like crystal comming in from my first planet so I tried to build orbital refinarys but to do this I needed research in orbital refinarys which required 4 civic structures. In the meantime I sent out a built scout on auto explore, it quickly finds some asteroids but they have a couple of ships gaurding them so I build a good heap of frigates, kill them and colonise 1 or 2 rocks. Next I aim to get 4 civic structures up, but really fight with the fact I dont have logistics slots so I try to expand those and end up out of resources, and buying them from the black market. I really at this point have made many mistakes and I think I expanded too early or something? because while Im still fumbling around and have sent my frigates to the new rock my planet gets hit with some kind of missle which wipes the whole population out! next I re-colonise and my aliegance is like 14%. Within the next 2 minutes some faction comes and wipes out my planet.
(NB - I forgot to also say I built a capital ship very early, you know the first one listed in TEC? I may be wrong but I think that used logistics slots?)

After watching some videos though and even playing through the game again and getting owned I can see this is one great game! And I am just wandering if any of you can give me tips on how I could have done better or even highlight the stuff I clearly done wrong

All input appreciated

(I think I am playing reactive as opposed to proactive but with me not playing many strats at all Im hoping that changes with time and advice. The weird thing is I actually want to keep playing the game , I can see how it will be dam fun! )

One final thing I went TEC and say I go in to the upgrade planet slot(cant remember proper name) and I upgrade the logistics 1 level, how many logistics slots does this give? Just thinking about my planets location it had 2 phase lanes comming to it so that means I am going to need a good solid but split defense, any input on this is appreciated since at the start it seems easy to overstretch and I think thats my problem also. (If anyone has any good replays let me know, I looked on the official site but theres only 1 that works with the 1.04 patch , it seems a very good one but I would like to watch 2 or 3)

Yes, build a cap ship first thing. There are conflicting views on which one, but most seem to recommend the colonizing ship, and that's the one I choose. (Note: I've only played 4 games, all as TEC so far). The advantage is, the capital ship can take a lot of punishment without a lot of backup early on, when the number of enemies you meet is small. As well, it will gain experience in every battle and you'll get a coupe levels pretty quickly.

Once you've built the cap ship, you can consider scuttling the capital ship factory. I don't think this is too bad a move, as you're likely not going to be building another one very soon, and you can get some of your investment back from it. You can then use this returned income elsewhere.

Don't go for orbital refineries right away. They don't increase your income fast enough to justify the expense in research and build costs early on. Pay close attention to the planets your scouts are discovering (send out at least two scouts and have them autoexplore, but check in on them periodically and micromanage a bit to be sure they're not retracing their steps right away). See what type of worlds they're finding close to your homeworld. Research the proper tech to colonize those types of worlds. In my latest game, there were quite a number of volcanic worlds, and few ice worlds close to my home planet, so I researched the volcanic colonization tech right away, but ignored the ice planet tech until later.

Build a civic and/or military research station, and add another of each when you need it for whatever tech you want to add. It's a balancing act between the two types, as you need to add civic stations to be able to colonize certain world types, as well as research for some of the early civilian techs. But you also want to upgrade your military tech asap as well. Improve your ships whenever you have the resources to do so.

Watch your fleet cap. When you have the money, build ships. Any fleet cap sitting unused is a waste, as no matter if you've maced your current cap or not, it drains the same percentage of your economy. Unused fleet cap is money thrown away. I also like to research the first fleet cap upgrade fairly quickly (this raises your fleet upkeep cost to 9%, which isn't crippling in the very early game). When you have your fleet at maximum, balance using your money for planet upgrades and defenses (but as soon as you get new planets, always immediately upgrade them so at least they're not draining income) and improving your military and civilian tech.

Keep expanding and claiming planets while all this is going on. It's a tricky balancing act, but you'll get the hang of it after you find a successful early-early game strategy.

I've probably made a number of n00b errors in this as well, but hopefully it will help you out some. Good luck and enjoy!

The most important thing is to get to understand about 80% of the concepts and go for it. Strategies and "ideal build order" is very subjective. For example, I think Coelocanth's advice for not building refineries early on is crazy (I think it's important to get all aspects of one's economy going ASAP), but if it works for him...great.

My point is this: it might be best to take it all with the proverbial grain of salt, try a few different things, and find out through trial and error what works best for your play style.

-HM

You will. There's some good advice here. Just remember that there's always a few different ways to do things successfully!

-HM

HM: really? You think it's worth imeediately spending the money, metal, and crystal to build 4 civic labs, research orbital refineries, and then build an orbital refinery right away*? I'm not trying to be argumentative. As I said, I'm new to this type of game, but it seems to me that's a pretty big cost for marginal benefit when you could take those resources and put them elsewhere. After you've got your economy going a bit, then I can see it being worth it.

*I gathered from redwing's post that he built one almost immediately (even before he had a few planets/asteroids under his control).

Extractors.

Yes, if you don't build those immediately, that's bad.

Now, to continue the discussion...

1. do you invest in the tech to make the extractors pull more metal and crystal or
2. do you research better weapons?

That's a choice that will vary based on your individual situation and preference.

I do neither, typically.

The extractor upgrades don't really do anything early game, because you have so few extractors. They can add up later when you have a lot of them. Weapons are similar, a 10% damage upgrade to one weapon type isn't very much if you only have a few ships, and not all of them have that weapon type (Vasari phase missiles are a possible exception due to the first upgrade being so cheap and Assailants being so much better then Skirmishers).

Personally if I'm going to upgrade early, its to unlock a couple of ship types (LRM, Flak), and then on the defensive side. The first hull upgrade is pretty cheap, and works on everything you make. The different tech trees have armor and shields in different spots, but an early upgrade to the cheaper of the two is also good, because again it works on every ship (armor also works on defensive structures).

I stay away from resource buffs until a bit later because extractor's first two tiers only give you a 10% bump in efficiency; it's only really useful to Vasari at game start because their skill tree upgrades both metal and crystal simultaneously. The high cost of resource upgrades really sucks for Advent. Much better to go with a temple of communion for them to bump their planets up to 100% allegiance and get the extra resource haul that way, and with a trade route for TEC so they can spam money and buy resources on the black market.

Weapons is also something to be careful of at first pass - only go for ones you can quickly use. A fairly good early investment is the health one, because it affects your structures too, but I'd rather have an extra light frigate than a 5% upgrade on everyone's shield in the first few skirmishes.

-- Retro