A complete newbies first game!

[Duze]

Alright. So I am gonna try do an Action Report for my first game. I will do it while playing so hopefully I can get some feedback and good suggestions while I advance through the campaign:)

I am totally new to the game, and I don't know anything. Thus, if I do stupid stuff, please tell me so I can learn!

Anyway. I will play without any of the expansions as I want to add them on one after the other during subsequent plays. I don't care if anyone thinks it's stupid to not just have a go with the entire game from the start, this is how I'm doing it:)

I will post the map of the galaxy for starters (can I make this smaller?):


I am thinking I want to start with the spaceplanes, although the planet has 4 wormholes. This is mostly because I think they have a rather nice ability:) But I am open to suggestions as for what to take. I will not start the game within the next 30 minutes as I have other stuff to do, so if I am gimping myself already you have a chance to let me know.

Anyway, I hope this turns out to be a great game:) I am playing against level 6 ai's because I haven't played the game before aside from the tutorial, and I am playing on epic speed as I like slower games:) Only 40 planets because I want to not make it take too long to either lose or win:)

Update:
I went ahead and started the game now. I chose the spaceplanes for my first advanced ship, and I went and got mkII of those and of the bombers and scouts.

I quickly scouted the nearest planets and so far it looks like this:


P3s are the ones I will immedeately take. They are on the way to the P7s which are the adv research stations. P1s are to be cleared but not taken at the moment. I don't want to enrage the AI quickly as I am a paranoid little newb:) I am going to take the P0 one as it will allow me to skip the planet below the top P7, since it contains not one, but two Ion cannons mkII and mkIII.

That's the gameplan for now anyway.

[Red Spot]

I will post the map of the galaxy for starters (can I make this smaller?):

I'm not exactly sure how it would translate to English, but right-click the screenshot when it is on your HD somewhere, and select the option "edit"(or something similair). Go to something like properties and adjust its scale or stretch/shrink the screeny.
If you use an uploadsite like photobucket it does already make a second smaller screenshot, called a thumbnail, that you can show on sites in such way that when you click the thumbnail you go you to full size screenshot.
http://photobucket.com/ (Seems you now have to register, but it still is free.)

Concerning a starting-planet. Dont bother too much about how many gates there are leading to the planet. Depending on your starting-strat this can work in your favour or against you.
For instance lots of neighbouring planets means you have plenty of mk1-planets to expand to and so likelly will be able to get an econ going before you neuter your first mk2-planet. It also means you 'could' create a situation where for the first couple of hours you never have to fear a wave on any other planet than your homeplanet (leave at least 1 adjacent gate and raid anything that could trigger waves on other planets, it saves you having to set up defences all over the place early game).
On the other hand, when surrounded you could become overwelmed if you tease the AI a lot and dont take care of the situation you created .. in time. Few planets surrounding you means you can quickly remove any threat from direct border-hostilities/waves, in effect never putting any defences on your homeplanet and so creating a situation where you can actually defend in depth(early game), if needed.

In short, it depends on how you play, what type of map, what type of AI, and which AI-plots/minor-factions you enabled. Have fun figuring out where your limitations are (There is just sooooo much difference you can create by changing some settings and/or generating an other map.)


Edit: Planets bordering your homeplanet are mk1-planets, the rest is mk2, or whatever higher mark which it will show. Dont be afraid to leave some mk1-planets on alert, however always try to prevent leaving mk2 and higher planets on alert without cleaning them of guard-posts. The more posts on planet, the larger the AI-force on that planet is allowed to become. On higher difficulties it becomes almost impossible to clean out mk4-planets that have been on alert for a long time without clearing them of posts, make sure you prevent this ever happening.
Dont bother taking planets for their IONs, or perhaps do, as you're still learning the game
(I would advice you to drop your plan to take the P7 planet, as it will alert a mk4-planet, or you should also take that planet, or neuter it.)

[BobTheJanitor]

I personally will always take every planet around my homeworld, regardless of the AIP cost. I just can't stop being paranoid that something is going to sneak in and kill my homeworld if I don't have that firebreak around it. If I set up a planet to funnel my waves into, it will always be something at least one, preferably two hops away from my homeworld. No reason to to take the extra risk of a world falling to a wave I wasn't as prepared for as I thought I was.

Space Planes can be a fun ship to toy around with. Just remember to abuse that cloaking ability as much as possible. If you can send in a small raid force to zap the tachyon guardians off the wormholes so they can cloak through, they're great at sneak attacking targets of opportunity. Or you can just uncloak them on the far side of a world so that the AI forces stream over that direction, and then bring your fleet in the wormhole now that the AI is distracted.

Have fun!

[Duze]

Update!

I got my first two planets, although a little later than I hoped as I suddenly had a couple waves incoming right when I wanted to attack.
The map looks like this (now with names:) ):

(I'm gonna reupload these to another service so I can resize them as there do not seem to be an option to just scale them to the page:/ )

I'm gonna follow Red spots advice and wait a while for the top planet, although I will neuter it as soon as I can. I will instead go for the bottom one, Jeseyag, as it also opens op for the same set of planets afterwards:)

The spaceplanes are so far pretty good, although I wasted a lot of time not having bombers along to clean up shields and such - will try to remember that:) Other than that I have been super paranoid and littered my planets with turrets, but I will probably scale that a little down once I see how it holds up:)

Thanks for the input guys:)

[Duze]

I got my third planet, Etko, and did a lot of scouting as well as some neutering of the neighbors. I found the first AI home planet at Zada which is a little closer than I would have liked. Expansion up that way will most likely not be my plan going forward anyway:/ I really need to get a new ship class though, so I'll have to take the bottom research soon. I have been having to build quite a bit starships to stand a chance during the last half hour. I'll do some more scouting later and follow up with a target list:)

[BobTheJanitor]

Wow an AI homeworld within 5 hops. I don't think I've ever seen one that close. Don't worry about it too much though, it shouldn't hurt you, just don't alert the core worlds if you can avoid it. In the end it will probably make things easier when you assault that world, because you can have a quick route to your homeworld for reinforcements. Assuming you don't fail horribly on your assault, of course. Then the AI has a quick route to YOU for retaliation. But in general, you should be OK. Just always take more ships than you think you'll need for killing an AI homeworld. And if they do retaliate, often the ships will only come over and kill the next world they see. They don't often move past that, unless your defenses on the next world are also horribly weak. It's always a question of balancing your defenses on border worlds and how weak you want to leave your inner planets on the off chance that something does break through your barricade.

[zoutzakje]

wow, talk about bad luck, an AI homeworld so close to yours. Now you defenitely should wait with taking that upper planet
be aware of homeworlds. Even if you're doing great in overall, the homeworlds can annihalate you're entire army if you're not carefull.
I've been away from AI war for a couple of weeks, but seeing a new player enjoy this game really makes me want to start playing again... I'll get to it as soon as I finished Portal 2

[Duze]

I've been rather busy this last week visiting family and working on my school project but I hope to get time to play again this week:)

I was wondering what might be the best move at the moment? I figure I should be expanding away from the homeworld, but to where? Should I scout a bit more and get intel on the last homeworld and make a path for that, or should I just expand away and then slowly scout more easily once I get closer?

I figure I need to at least get and advanced research station asap. But what else could I be doing? Teching up Starships?

[zoutzakje]

I'd say first scout everything at least 2-3 hops away. If you want to unlock higher marks, do fighter, bomber and frigate first (and perhaps spaceplanes too if you enjoy using them). Starships cost to much resources to be worth it in early game.
If you can't find any planet with an advanced research station on it or fabricator or anything, pick a planet with a lot of resources on it for example. Or a planet that only borders low mark enemy planets so you won't have to worry about the enemy reinforcing too fast. Avoiding a planet that borders a mark IV planet is often a good idea in general (unless you're planning to quickly take the mark IV planet as well of course). I even try to avoid Mark III planets whenever possible.