I guess I was speaking from some of the Youtube videos I saw. Question, how are you able to build anything without upgrading your extractors? By mid game I usually have my crystal upgraded the first two tiers, and I'm still short all the time. Any trick here, or are you just saying the gains aren't worth the time/investment to upgrade?
They are usually not worth the investment, especially in competitive games where over investment in research can ultimately lead to your defeat if your enemy invests that instead in military and kills you before the research can pay itself off. You will get by far the vast majority of your income from either trade or your allies if you do team games. Once you have credits, you just need to use the black market. A lot!
I've heard a lot about these positions, but found no documentation on where/what their responsibilities are. Naturally, I get the gist of it, the Eco will feed the other players' militaries...but where can I find something on developed strategies for each position/how best to help out, etc. This is stuff noobs need to know
I think there is a sticky detailing them, but the problem with stickies here is that a lot of their authors move on, so the stickies don't get updated, new up to date stickies rarely get added, and no one wants stickies to get taken down. The general advice is probably good but always be ware of the specifics unless it is a pretty recent post.
Anyways, the positions come from the fact in random maps, players are always spawned in a ring about the same distance away from a star. Thus each player is immediately adjacent to two other player, and depending on how the random map generator places these players, your tactical position is thus determined. There are of course 3 combinations.
1. Both of your neighbors are on your team. Yea! You're in the Economy (eco) spot. Your enemies have to either go through your friends or go through the middle of the map to attack you, so you should have at least a half an hour before you can possibly be attacked. Since you are relatively safe, it is your job to expand and develop relentlessly to develop the economy that will power your entire team to victory. You don't want to invest too much in fleet because the fleet upkeep will hurt you economy. Instead, expand aggressively with your starting fleet supply and capture as many planets as possible, then start building a lot of trade ports as fast as you can. Once the money starts coming in (on perhaps even before that if necessary), start "feeding", or sending resources, to your allies on the front lines doing the fighting. Since you shouldn't need a large military, you can take full advantage of the lack of fleet upkeep and provide the resources your allies will use to win the war. Eventually you may fleet up a bit so you can build a titan to assist your allies in battle (or if one of your neighbors gets killed you will no longer be eco anymore), or invest in things like super weapons to try and influence the war from a far, but your main job, especially while your new (and thus your allies can do a better job at fighting) is to give economic aid to your team.
2. One neighbor is friendly, the other hostile. You're on the front line. The good news is the enemy is only coming from one direction (at first). The bad news is you may not be very far apart from your enemy, so battles are going to start pretty quick. Especially while you are new this can be discouraging, as experienced players will go for the kill ASAP, and even more so when they think they are better than you (and odds are at first they'll be right). Military is much more important here than it ever is against the AI, so just expand and invest in the most basic things (first few population upgrades and extractors, early frigate designs, planet colonization techs etc.) until you're sure you can protect expensive assets like trade ports. If things don't go well, see the next position. If you can hold your own, things may die down a bit as you both build up to try and take each other out, and at this point you can start investing and developing more, but scout your enemy well so you know how large his force is, and watch out if other players are sending him reinforcements to try and double team you.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the enemy team may have Eco players as well, so its possible your enemy will have far more resources to spend than you because he is getting help. In this case your team will either also try to help you, or (especially while you're new), they'll figure it is better to attack the other flak to try and break through there. In this later case just try to hang in there, if you can hold out long enough for your allies to kill an enemy frontliner first, they'll be able to threaten the enemy eco players and likely win the game.
3. Both of your neighbors are hostile. You are in the dreaded suicide position. Typically it's pretty easy to tell when there is a suicide player, and your enemies will waste no time trying to kill you off quickly, so expect to be double teamed (occasionally, one of your allies might attack one of your neighbors hard enough to force him to keep all his forces on defense, but don't count on this). In this spot expansion isn't as much of a priority, unless you're very good or lucky you will lose your home world. You just need to hold out as long as possible and try to inflict as much damage as possible.
Okay, so you got double teamed and your homeworld is getting bombarded within 15 minutes. However, that does not mean you are dead. Multiplayer does not usually play with "Capital Victory" on, so you can actually survive without planets as long as one of your team mates is alive. In the suicide (or any defeated) spot colony capitalships are thus vitally important, as if it survives the battle, you can retreat to the no man's land in the center of the map near the star, and try to restart there. Ideally you'll want to try and meet up near one of your allies so they can cover you. After colonizing a couple planets, start building up a basic military force of whatever you can muster and see what you can do to help your allies. Your force will be small by comparison but even a small force can be significant when lead by an intelligent human player. And if it is a close game, the fact the enemy failed to kill you off completely can be a game changer, and you might even be able to make a good comeback in your Empire's new territory, especially if things are going well enough the eco player(s) can feed you.
I'm familiar with double colonization though haven't had the guts to try it yet. I assume you have to wait for your colony frigate to gain nearly full antimatter before jumping to the new system, as you lose antimatter when phase jumping? At what point is it "safe" to jump to have enough time to get in and get out before the militia gets you? Or do you always use a scout to "lead them astray" before sending in the frigate? Reports seem to vary on optimal technique.
Everyone does it a slightly different way. Colony frigates lose 100 antimatter when jumping, but if you can clear the entire gravity well you want to jump in the colony frigate ASAP. You don't have to jump the colony frigate in before all the milita are destroyed, but the fastest ways probably do. Only when it has close to 190 antimatter should you send it in with militia still present though (make always make sure the siege frigates will be dead by the time you colonize it).
While there are more advanced forms of it like using turrets to clear the remaining militia after siege frigates are destroyed, the most important concepts of the strategy are colonizing in two directions at once, learning to use your capital ship to clear militia by itself, and using the rest of your fleet supply for the colony frigate and combat frigates to clear the militia in the other direction.
