Early game metal starvation

[BobTheJanitor]

I've noticed a trend in my games of never having enough metal in the early game. I'm curious if this is just me, or if this is typical. I always seem to have plenty of crystal, though. Is the game just designed to work out that way, or is there some sort of more balanced build style I could be going for that could make better use of both resources? In general, early game, I'm just building a lot of basic triangle ships and standard cheaper turrets. If there's some way I could be playing smarter, I'm always happy to learn about it.

[keith.lamothe]

That's kind of funny, since I tend to run short on crystal.  It depends a lot on which of those turrets you're building.  Setting up a solid spider turret network is basically bye-bye-crystal for me   Tractor turrets used to be pretty nasty too when I needed more of them, but mega-stacking them isn't as necessary lately it seems.

Personally I tend towards unlocking the higher mark economic command stations and resource harvesters to make fairly ridiculous amounts of income.  Even then I run into starvation in the early game, but it's not so bad.

You said triangle and cheap turrets; are you building bombers and missile frigates in equal number?  Are you just building the "basic turret" or also others? Which ones?

Other than that, the balance between the number of metal and crystal "spots" for harvesters can vary quite a bit from game to game.

[chemical_art]

I always run into metal problems because bombers need them and I always need bombers.

But early game I just build fighters, the extra ship, and grav turrets. They don't bankrupt me but I got to remember to either stop building fleetship or grav turrets if I want to build something else otherwise I go broke.

[Orelius]

Yup, this happens to me often, too.  I also find that the game likes to give me more crystal on my homeworld when my bonus ship is metal-heavy, and vice versa.  It's rather frustrating.

To deal with metal scarceness in the early game, I cry and suck my thumb.  It's not that much of a problem if you make a few early conquests, though.

I find the lack of crystal to be a much more important thing in the late game, especially when playing the fallen spire campaign.  Pretty much all spire ships and spire things in general take up a ridiculous amount of crystal.  Forcefields, too.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the costs of FS stuff are basically designed around the principle of making you weep   Or build lots of hab centers, though even (600m+c)/s pales compared to something that costs 2 million m+c.

Thankfully, the _guns_ of the FS stuff are basically designed around the principle of making the AI weep

[Orelius]

Well, true.  I just feel that the one problem with having a spire fleet is if you lose it, you'll never be able to rebuild it all within a reasonable time span.

Sometimes I end up playing two homeworlds just so I can have the extra mark III economic stations.

[BobTheJanitor]

Yeah I always go to mark 3 econ stations relatively early. And I also notice that I'm always upgrading metal harvesters to Mk 2 or even 3 pretty early game as well. Although I don't know how effective that is, to be honest. It seems like the increases for them are more balanced around late game, with a lot of planets. When you're only sitting on 4 or 5 worlds, getting an extra 8 metal per harvester doesn't really add up to a whole lot.

And yes, I do tend to put my fighter/bomber/frigate builds all on loop, along with whatever starting ship I get. Turret wise, I am sort of haphazard. For general wormhole defense I will probably go with a couple grav turrets, 3 or 4 mines, and then maybe 5 standard  turrets and 5 lasers. Then I might just randomly pick some of the other turret types for the heck of it. I'm not overly strategic with my turrets, to be honest. It's probably something I should look into, if I ever get better about recognizing what turret counter is best for what ship type. I tend to be sparing on sniper turrets and I usually don't get spider turrets unless I find the AI favoring raider-style ships.

And yeah, my current game isn't using fallen spire, but I do recall how much crystal those ships eat up. It's crazy.

[dotjd]

I can't imagine playing without getting mark 3 economic command stations with my initial knowledge.

Although hmm, next game I should see if I can get mark 2 fighters first (they're usually my next tech) and see if I accumulate enough knowledge to get mark 3 stations before I get my first planet.

[zebramatt]

I remember suggesting a while back that starting resources could use a boost as I consistently run dry of both in the first half hour.

The suggestion was met with an immensely mixed response, to say the least! 

[TechSY730]

I remember suggesting a while back that starting resources could use a boost as I consistently run dry of both in the first half hour.

The suggestion was met with an immensely mixed response, to say the least! 

IIRC, the issue was that increasing the starting resources changes the balance of the very early game. Most notably, this change would make the human stronger by the time the first AI wave came around. So we could do one of two things.
1. Make the first AI wave come earlier, to reflect the fact the human(s) can build their first fleet earlier
2. Just accept the fact that this makes the very early game easier, and let it be easier

I'm sure many people wouldn't mind 2, considering how hard the rest of the phases of the game have become.

However, raising the starting resources has less and less effect as the game goes on, as the resources you will be collecting will overshadow starting resources even by the mid-late early game.

Me? I don't really care either way. I haven't had much trouble with the very early game, but I can understand the frustrations of a "pressured" economy.

[zebramatt]

If I recall, the source of the suggestion from me was that it actually wasn't effecting much of anything aside from having me stack up a bunch of stuff I wanted built and then cranking the speed up so it finished without me having to twiddle my thumbs.

Ne'er was there an issue of balance in that regard, but I believe the consensus was that the effect of boosting the starting resources would either be negligible in that case, or effective in that case and unbalancing in others.

So it was shelved for later consideration.

[Hearteater]

7/7 difficulty game, no expansions.  I have not purchased ANY CS upgrades or harvester upgrades.  I am closing in on the first enemy homeworld now.  Until I took out the last of the CSGs I had only 8 systems.  I've had no real problems with my economy.

[BobTheJanitor]

no expansions.

That's going to be a big reason why. No golems, no spirecraft, no trader, etc. Of course those don't enter in to the really early game, but once you get a couple jumps out you're likely to start finding them. Without those resource sinks, I'm sure the game would play a lot differently. I've actually never tried playing the game just vanilla before, to be honest.

[Hearteater]

Yeah, but early game before you get those things I still don't have issues.  I have no idea why you would need Econ CS MkII as your first research.  Just grab Fighter II and claim an extra system.  That's one more Econ CS MkI and harvesters which should make up for it.  Upgrade Econ CS when you hit the expansion stuff.

[Orelius]

It's always a good idea to start your economy strong as you'll need it for everything.

However, you don't always get planets with a good amount of resource nodes.  You can even end up losing resources on said planets if you try to maintain some reactors there.