Help, I loose on the easy level.

It took me a while to learn this tactic for the tec, and it works really good! Try it!

On your home planet,

Start with X resource extractors.
1 Capital ship factory.
1 CIVILAN research structure


Build from Factorys:
2 Scout ships (As soon as you can You need intel)
1 Capital ship of your choice. (I get the Maza Dreadnaught)
1 Colony Friggate (If you did not get the 3rd capital ship)
5 Cobalt Light Friggates


On the nearest ASTERIOD

Send your Capital ship and 5 Cobalt Light Friggates.

When the seige friggate is dead, send your colony friggate.

Colonize it.

Build the extractors you need.

Build 1 Civilan Research Station.

Now research The ability to colonize Volcanic/Ice.

Also Research Trade Ports.


On all of your planets

Build a Trade port.


Now colonize the planet on the other side of your homeworld

On that planet, Build anathor Research Station.

Research Orbital Refinement.

Research, The communications Station for culture.



Now you can build a Refinery, Trade port, and commucation station on every planet you have.


If you did this then you should have the resources for a strong army.

^^^Strat is ace.

I'm using a slightly different strategy.

I build a free Akkan Battlecruiser, and then as soon as I can, I build a Kol.

I then send both out to the nearest planets and colonise them.

I dont waste time with small ships. On the more heavily defended pirate planets, 2 battleships without upgrades will prevail, even if both lose their shields and maybe even some hull. (Thats not a problem, they will repair themselves).

If the world has more than 6 defenders or more than 2 Heavy Cruisers, jump to the next planet. You dont need to have all your planets linked, as long as its only pirates on them and your not sending single ships there. When you want to add to your 'strike fleet', you build the factories wherever your fleet is, destroy the old ones and replace them with refineries. I try to add 5 Heavy Cruisers and 5 light carriers to the fleet as soon as I can research and build them. This gives you something that can take on anything except a larger enemy fleet. Add 5 LRM's and 5 Flak frigates, and your a balanced fleet.

The important thing early on, is to get 4-6 planets or asteroids colonised, so you can get 6 of each research bases built, and full populations. You build only what you need, resources and research.

Dont go too far away, do the close planets and then consolidate, research and then build a fleet that can take pirates easily and defend against an early enemy.

If your encountering enemy early on, your selecting the wrong senarios. You want a game with more space, no extra stars, and a few enemies set a distance away from each other. Until you have learned how to utilize what you have got, dont do senarios with early major conflicts in them. Go for big numbers of planets and few enemies, with few phase lines and few colonised pirate planets, and give yourself room to expand without hitting an agressive enemy. Once you are confident in the gameplay, then go for more agressive smaller games.

I prefer to hold off enemy contact as long as possible. This allows me to do as much research as possible first, giving my ships a tactical edge in firepower and range, and giving me resources stored in which to react to anything unexpected happening.

So I dont do any fortifying of early colonies, I just build them for research. Once I have 7 of each research base, I then start putting in refineries and trade ports on new colonies. These boost resources, which then allow you to do your research quicker. The faster you complete the research, the better your tactical position is, and you can then think strategically for a while as you expand and you build fleets.

If you have extra slots on any planet, put in trade ports and refineries. The more you have, the more income and resources they make for you. Trade ports need 2 adjacent planets with trade ports to work, but refineries do not. So choose according to what is around each planet. But if you have 4 spare slots, build 2 trade and 2 refineries if you can. If you need cash, build 4 trade. If you need resources, build 4 refineries.

edit : Dont forget your black market. DOnt put off doing something becasue you out of 1 thing. Use your black market to convert one thing into another and keep doing research and building as fast as you can.

Also, dont forget to fully research the colony as fast as possible. If the colony is not fully researched, your income goes down for as long as its not fully researched. Go for maximum population and planet health asap.

Have you tried slowing down the game speed and using PAUSE? Giving yourself time to observe, plan, think and react helps a lot. I use PAUSE so much I mapped it to all of my keys.

Ok, slight exaggeration...)

Game speed ? Where is that ? I dont recall anything in the manual about a game speed. Theres the speed selections in the options before starting, but even on fast, the game is often too slow for me.

If there is a speed control and pause, where is it ?

I don't know for pause as I just open the menu, but in addition to the options before starting a game, you can use the + and - keys to speed up/slow down the game in single player.

The pause button is the Pause/Break button next to scroll lock which is next to Print Screen.

Well there you go. Shouldnt something so basic have made it into the manual and keys sheet ? Or am I expecting too much ?

Thanks

Choose Options --> Key Bindings, and all will be revealed.

Increasable speed was not added until 1.04! And the manual is v 1.00 so thats why it is not in the book.