Managing
For large ship battles where's theres lots of ships shooting, and being shot, focus firing is a good way of killing cap ships, or that dammed ship who keeps reparing every one else. Another thing that might not qualify as "micro" is setting the range of ships. A ship with good range should let the enemies come to it, so making them hold position if they're grouped together will help - just place them some where where they will be able to help, or move them manually when/if you have to.
Another ting that might be worth thinking about is the formation in which they're flying/standing still shooting stuff. The game automatically parks "tough" ships in front, and fragile ships in the background. But how they line up is based on where they're comming from, so making sure you get this right will keep your fleet alive and shooting for longer.
More can be said about moving around, one thing annoying me is simply that identical ships will "line up" of form a wall if you have enough of them. While this is great if you can be certain where the enemies will come from it will be a disadvantage in a really messy situation, where the ships you're trying to shoot have your wall surrounded. You can "fix" this by moving them in small groups to roughly the same area, this will "box" the ships together more, giving less weak spots. The same thing can be said if you got a ship with a nifty ability, and want to keep all the other ships in range.
Now just randomly sending ships into battle works if you send enough, managing a coordinated attack will make it more effective. Keeping your eyes peeled on a single planet takes your focus away from everything else though.
A lot more could be said about managaging. But something works for you, and something doesn't. This seems "like a learn by doing" thing.
During some extensive tests of TEC capital ships, I found that even if you only got a single ship in combat, deciding what it should do, or not do, can do a huge difference.
The only ship interesting to talk about right now is the Akkan Class Battlecruiser. It's a colonization vessel, so I wasn't expecting much from it. I was, however, wondering what the Armistice* ability could do for it.
*Armistice will make a tempoary cease fire, preventing any ships nearby, including it self, from shooting, or using abilities.
How I tested was by letting a snigle ship, in this case, a single Akkan Battlecruiser lvl 8, fly to a pirate base I had left untouched.
I did this 3 times.
First, the Armistice ability was on autocast. It ended up not being able to shoot anything, so for some reason it flew randomly around, and ended up very close to the planet, and got it self shot up by multiple cannons, and ships that quickly swarmed it. I estimate that it killed 10% off all enemy resistance present before blowing up.
Second time I managed the Armistice ability, and made it hold it's position. Though not a sucess it did preform a lot better this way. I estimate that it killed 50% of the enemy ships before blowing up.
Third time I disabled autorecast and I didn't activate it my self either, this surprisingly enough worked better than first time, as it killed around 20% of the ships before blowing up.
So even if there's only 1 ship to manage it might make a difference, and depending on the differences it just might not be worth the trouble anyway.
For large ship battles where's theres lots of ships shooting, and being shot, focus firing is a good way of killing cap ships, or that dammed ship who keeps reparing every one else. Another thing that might not qualify as "micro" is setting the range of ships. A ship with good range should let the enemies come to it, so making them hold position if they're grouped together will help - just place them some where where they will be able to help, or move them manually when/if you have to.
Another ting that might be worth thinking about is the formation in which they're flying/standing still shooting stuff. The game automatically parks "tough" ships in front, and fragile ships in the background. But how they line up is based on where they're comming from, so making sure you get this right will keep your fleet alive and shooting for longer.
More can be said about moving around, one thing annoying me is simply that identical ships will "line up" of form a wall if you have enough of them. While this is great if you can be certain where the enemies will come from it will be a disadvantage in a really messy situation, where the ships you're trying to shoot have your wall surrounded. You can "fix" this by moving them in small groups to roughly the same area, this will "box" the ships together more, giving less weak spots. The same thing can be said if you got a ship with a nifty ability, and want to keep all the other ships in range.
Now just randomly sending ships into battle works if you send enough, managing a coordinated attack will make it more effective. Keeping your eyes peeled on a single planet takes your focus away from everything else though.
A lot more could be said about managaging. But something works for you, and something doesn't. This seems "like a learn by doing" thing.
Earning your ORE!
The question of going for extractor upgrades or the orbital refineries is tricky. I normally just start with a few upgrades to the extractors - I have them anyway, and the first few levels of upgrades arren't that expensive. When I think that my economy is looking good, I'll research for the Orbital refineries. Once I've got them running the economy quickly starts looking better as well. This is when I normally work on the last extractor upgrades, and when they're done you can, if you're TEC continue by upgrading the cargohold capacity of trade/refinery ships, this also boots you economy somewhat.
